


swings and waterslides

by TaFuilLiom



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, oneshots, prompts, ratings will vary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:20:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaFuilLiom/pseuds/TaFuilLiom
Summary: A collection of oneshots and prompts. Ratings will vary.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lexie Grey's death scene, but it's Alex. Please skip it if this isn't your thing. Set after 3x05. Big warning//major character death

Maggie has never been a fan of heights. 

She can just about stomach flights because on good days she admires the view, and on bad days she yanks the window shutter down and drifts into a cramped but decent sleep to the rumble of the engine.

That dizzying sensation of vertigo swings upon her now as she steps back into the DEO’s main room. The afternoon is relatively quiet. When major operations are not underway, the base is able to function with a skeleton crew. Maggie’s scan for familiar faces turns up empty. She digs into her jacket pocket and pulls out an orange, making her way towards the staircase. 

After a string of successful joint operations that had once again averted the apocalypse, the President invited the team leaders to a special series of meetings in the Pentagon. That meant travelling to D.C. on the DEO’s jet this afternoon.

(It means travelling with Alex, this afternoon). 

So, here she is, an hour earlier than take-off, roaming the secret base.

Digging her thumbnail into the peel of the orange, Maggie curses the thickness of the skin. Working alongside Alex had been fine, the missions’ cost too high to risk wading into personal matters. But now, interacting at the end of it all fills her with dread.  

She reaches the top of the stairs, fighting with the stubborn peel of the fruit. That is, until someone shoulder barges her, knocking the orange out of her hand and smushing it in one booted step. 

Winn draws back in surprise, unsteady on his feet. “Maggie.”

She looks down at the flesh plastered to the sole of Winn’s foot and the floor of the DEO, juice oozing out. “You squashed my orange,” she says dryly.

“I’m so sorry!” he cries, raising his foot to inspect the sodden sole. 

“Sorry isn’t gonna get me my orange back,” she notes sternly, crossing her arms over her chest. 

He looks like a kicked puppy for all of the five seconds that she glares at him before she smirks, pulling him into a hug. He sags against her, relieved. 

“You can’t do that to me, Sawyer. I’m fragile.”

“As was my orange,” she deadpans, leaning back and sighing at the mess. 

“Eating light before the flight?” 

“Yeah, J’onn mentioned dinner on board. I’m dreading to see what the US-”

“Maggie.”

Winn’s eyes lower away from hers as her stomach drops out at the call. She slowly turns to see Alex coming towards them, a broad grin on her face. 

“Oh, hey,” Maggie says, caught off-guard by how eager Alex is to greet her. The agent is practically bouncing on the tips of her toes as she stops beside the pair. 

Winn slinks away, making a gesture down towards the main room and  leaving the two ex-lovers on the balcony together. Alex looks down at the sticky mess on the floor between them. 

“Accident?” she guesses.

“Tragedy,” Maggie mumbles, inching away from the splatter.

“Poor orange,” Alex says. Her eyes flick up and down Maggie’s body, and she frowns at the angsty shifting from foot to foot. “Are you nervous? I thought you didn’t have a problem flying?”

“I like travelling. I don’t like flights,” Maggie clarifies, happy to let Alex lead them into banal conversation. Small talk is easy; it lets them stray from the looming clouds of their history, their broken-hearts and their broken home. 

Alex’s touch on her shoulder is delicate as a feather when it comes, barely even making contact but still enough to cause a stir in Maggie’s bloodstream.

“How are you?” She ducks her chin, shyness taking root. “I’m sorry, this is…” 

Those clouds grow thicker, darker, like they’re pregnant with rain coming in off the sea. Not ready to be caught in the downpour quite yet, Maggie says, “Let’s talk about it later, Danvers.”

Alex’s hand falls away, and Maggie almost catches it between her own to prop back on her shoulder, because that sudden absence just feels  _ wrong _ . 

“No, honestly,” she promises. “When we get to D.C. and everyone is settled in, let’s go grab dinner, or a drink or something. I sense that we’re both thinking the same thing.”

Hope springs back into Alex’s face. “Yeah?”

She suspects that Alex’s enthusiasm to speak to her was built up over many nights lying awake and wishing for that one opportunity to share all that had been left unsaid, to clear out clutter in their hearts. 

“Yeah. We’ll talk.” 

“Okay.” Alex beams, nodding. “There’s still some time before boarding. I can get you another orange, if you want?”

“No, I’m good. I think I can hold off until the onboard meal.”

Alex grimaces before she goes, warning Maggie ahead of time about the quality of said meal, and despite the heaviness of the interaction, she finds a smile itching at her cheeks. 

Hitching her elbows against the balcony railing, her heart thumping beneath her breastbone, Maggie hopes that the cross-country flight will be enough time to figure out what the hell she is going to say.

~

Nebraska has harsh winters, but when the snow melts and spring revives the greenery again, the place is breathtaking. Maggie loves hiking with her family, spending her summers in nature. Pollen is thick in the air, and she stares up through the trees, trying to catch sight of the occasional batting of wings that she hears rattling the branches.

But something about this particular trip is unsettling. The place is warped. Sun breaks through, falling down to the forest floor in beams, but everything seems like an overcast day, everything cold in the shade-

Wait, she’s not-

Maggie looks down at herself, confused about the absence of her school backpack, and then registers the wisps of smoke and sparks of electricity around her. 

She stumbles around, trying to find purchase in _this_ reality, trying to remember anything. She isn’t a kid hiking with her family. She’s-  

A hand clamps around her elbow, and she staggers slightly, whipping her head around to see Vasquez. Her mouth is moving, but Maggie can only hear the birds above them, the rustling of those frail branches scraping against one another.

Vasquez is pointing with her other hand, tugging her in some direction. Dumbly she follows the unceremonious path they carve through brambles and creeks.

When Maggie was in middle school, before all it all went to hell, she had a friend called Kevin who played bass guitar. Sitting in his garage as he twanged at his second hand Tanglewood, she had watched as a thick, vibrating string snapped back and embedded itself into the back of his hand. Horrified at the injury, at the oozing blood and Kevin’s pre-pubescent squeals, Maggie had sat, frozen. 

At the sight of Alex trapped under a chunk of ripped engine, she is that girl again, terrified at what she’s seeing.

Sound bleeds back into her surroundings, and she hears ragged breathing, someone yelling for help, a distant scream, electricity crackling around. 

“Agent Danvers!” Vasquez says, tripping over herself as rushes over, Maggie stumbling along behind her. 

That Tanglewood string is embedded around her heart, Maggie is sure of it, unable to process the sight of Alex, wide-eyed and whimpering, lodged underneath a section of broken plane. Her face is blotted with blood;  _ hers? _

“How’d you get yourself in there, huh?” Maggie asks, haunching down. 

(She is aware of how the brain has the ability to protect itself in traumatic situations, and wonders if that reliance on banter is a reflex).

Before Alex can reply, a third figure emerges from the trees, coughing up a storm and dragging one of his feet. Maggie recognises him as Agent Demos. 

“We fucking crashed. Who’s still alive?” he asks, finding them. Blood is glutted along the side of his temple and jaw, and staining a large patch of his thigh. Rounding the engine and seeing the predicament, he stops immediately. “Oh, Jesus, Agent Danvers.” 

Alex doesn’t speak, eyes flitting between the three of them and then staying on Maggie. She pants, like she is having trouble catching her breath.  

“We’ve gotta get you outta there,” Maggie assures faintly, thinking that Alex is panicking, silently holding her gaze. 

“We’re never getting that thing moved,” Vasquez says.

_ Has Alex always looked so young?  _ Maggie wonders, her body trembling.  _ Or was this just a pure, childish terror taking hold? _

The breeze picks up, causing squawks of protest above. 

“We have to try,” Demos argues, putting his weight on his good leg.

Vasquez nods jerkily, uncertain as she glances down at their feet, and then moves towards the engine. She braces herself, as does Demos, and after a pause, Maggie finally breaks eye contact with Alex to do the same. 

And they do try, the engine creaking as they grunt and groan, but their attempts are futile.

Finally, Maggie’s muscles fiery with exertion, they tumble away. Vasquez takes a deep breath and kneels down. “Ma’am, if you give me a rough assessment of your injuries, Agent Demos and I can try and get the radio in the cockpit working.”

“Yeah,” Demos chimes, stripping off his shirt and twisting it into a makeshift bandage around his bleeding thigh. “I figure there’s a remote reboot for exactly this kinda thing. We can get word back to base.”

Maggie listens as Alex takes another wheezing breath, and then speaks for the first time since they found her; “My legs and my pelvis a-are crushed, and I can’t feel my other arm so I’m not sure if it’s even there anymore-” 

The image alone has Maggie turning away for a moment, pressing her fist to her mouth and suppressing a gag. The burning need to vomit comes not just because of Alex’s description, but because of the shock of it all. She stares up into the swaying trees, seeing the silhouettes of dark birds perched, observing.

_ Vertigo _ . The birds blur and spin until she can get grounded again.

“-and my chest feels like it’s gonna e-explode so it’s probably a-” She hears Alex swallow before she roughly utters, “-m-massive haemothorax.” 

Maggie turns back, and watches Vasquez’s shoulders stiffening as she and Demos exchange looks. 

“What?” she prompts, attention moving past them to Alex. “What does that mean?”

But the three remain silent. If anything, the two agents kneeling down shrink further away from her. 

“What does it mean?” Maggie implores, straining to stay reasonable despite the flaring panic in her chest. “Why are you just sitting there, do something!”

“They know it won’t h-help, Maggie,” Alex huffs, resigned. 

Demos tightens the bandage around his thigh. Vasquez stares at the engine, ashamed. (Maggie questions whether or not there’s a chance that she’s hallucinating this whole thing. Maybe she fell asleep on the plane after all.  _ Explains the vertigo _ ).

“No, you’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna get you out of this,” Maggie says.  _ Hard-headed. _

Vasquez kneels closer to Alex, saying, “I’m gonna go call Supergirl, Ma’am.”

But it is in a much more apologetic, borderline affectionate tone than the one than Maggie has heard her use with an authority figure. She watches her rise up and help Demos hobble on his strong leg, and then sling an arm around his shoulder as they head off in search of, presumably, the nose of the plane.  

Maggie circles the engine, searching for some miracle solution that they’ve missed, but eventually comes back around to where Alex lies, pinned. She drops to her knees, peering under the wreckage.

“Hey, you okay?”

It is the first time that she has been this close, and she sees that Alex’s mouth and teeth are smeared with blood. It’s all she can focus on at the lowly call; “Maggie.”

“Vasquez and Demos are gonna use one of your technology beacon things-” She sticks a thumb out and flicks it behind her.

“M-Maggie.”

She nods fiercely. “They’re gonna get a distress signal to the DEO, if they aren’t already on their way. They’re monitoring the radars and stuff, right? They’ve gotta know what happened.”

“...Maggie.”

“Your little sister’s gonna zoom on over here and get that hunk of junk off of you.” She twists to look over her shoulder in the direction Vasquez and Demos had left in. “Just a few minutes, alright? She’ll be back in no time.”

“Maggie, I’m...I’m dying.”

She looks back at Alex then, the meaning floating around like smoke. 

“What?” Alex’s pained features whirl that meaning around and around her head until finally, she grasps it back from the air. “No you’re not-”

A high hum of confirmation comes as Alex cuts off Maggie’s denial. “I am.”

The string constricts, knifing clean through Maggie’s heart as Alex tries to take a few steadying breaths. 

“Please, tell-” She loses her nerve, the tears choking her. She takes another several shallow lungfuls, and pushes again. “Tell Kara- that I love her-” Her face screws up in pain, the effort to get the words out proving too much. “And that she was- a good sister-” While she winces, Maggie shakes her head at the grave requests. “Please? T-tell my mom-”

“You’re not dying, what are you talking about?” Maggie won’t listen to Alex saying her goodbyes she  _ can’t- _ The needles on the forest floor prick at her palms, her fingers clawing into the dirt, pressing. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“Hold-” Alex’s voice is thick with her tears, bloodied fingertips twitching. “-my hand?”

Maggie glances at her open palm. Remembers its soft warmth, bringing pleasure or comfort, or a blend of both. Remembers how it slotted so perfectly with the shape of her own hand in the park, in the car, in bed. “I’m not holding your hand because you’re not dying.”

“Hold my- hand,” Alex urges, finding the strength. Like an order, a command.

“No, you’re not dying, you hear me?” Maggie refuses, because she has never bowed down to Alex’s commands when she hasn’t believed in them. “You don’t die today, Danvers.”

Scrabbling up, she hobbles to the side of the engine, noticing now her weak left ankle. She grapples with the jagged metal edges, straining to lift it. She groans through gritted teeth, trying once, twice again, finally giving up when her muscles begin to scream. 

“Where the fuck are you, Kara?” she spits, thumping her palms onto the broken wing, its sun-warmed metal cooling as the sun dips lower behind the treeline. 

Defeat crashes down over her as she realises that Alex is a doctor; she has assessed her injuries, and she must know how this is playing out inside of her body, how this battle is being fought. Her hands sliding down and off the engine, she has another revelation.

Kara, with her superhuman speed, isn’t going to make it in time. 

That sickening sense of defeat pushes her back down onto her knees, and then her stomach, and then shifts her towards Alex again. 

She steels herself, meeting Alex’s watery eyes.  _ This is can’t be the end, _ she mourns, sliding her palm across Alex’s anyway, feeling the grit of dried blood.  _ Of all things, all fucking things to kill Alex- _

Alex smiles and closes her eyes for a moment, trying to seem happy, bittersweet. Even at the end, she is trying to console Maggie, who loves her for it. 

When Alex opens her eyes again, they’re brimming with those unshed tears, but there is also acceptance. Maggie acknowledges that she really is losing this battle, and their hands tremble as she clenches as tight as she can. 

(Alex doesn’t even flinch, and Maggie wonders if she can even feel that anymore either, her hand is so cold.) 

“I love you,” she says once, and then presses her lips into a line, determined to speak with courage, to make Alex  _ know. _

Alex smiles, pained but wide as she shakes her head. “You don’t-have to say it just because-”

“No, I do. I love you,” Maggie insists, a thousand memories flipping through her mind, so vivid that she could pluck them out and display them here between them like a picture book. “The moment we met, I fell in love with you. I will always be in love with you.”

Alex breathes out a  _ yeah? _ Like disbelief, like she had the first time in the DEO med bay.

“Yeah,” Maggie says. “Which is why you have to stay alive.”

Alex shudders, her lucidity slipping, and Maggie forces each word out like a plea to keep her there as long as she can. 

“We’re-” She tries to pin down where to start. “We’re gonna get married.”

Alex starts to gasp, sharp, desperate attempts to get air into her lungs. 

“And, you’re gonna become director of the DEO one day. And we’re gonna have that house out by the riverside that we loved, and two or three dogs running around the backyard.”

This tugs Alex back to her for a second, lips curving up in amusement. 

“Ger-” She struggles, starting the word a few times. “Gertrude can have- siblings.”

“Yeah,” Maggie says, huffing out a dry laugh. “A sister or a brother.”

Despite having difficulty breathing, Alex snorts at that, managing sarcasm, “That’s nice.” 

“We’re gonna have the best life, Alex, you and me. Full and rich and-” Her voice drops to whisper, promising the world, anything that would keep Alex with her. “And we can talk about kids again. Maybe we were both too quick to just dismiss this. We could try- we could-”

If possible, she grips Alex’s hand tighter, as if that would tether her to this world just a little longer. (That hand, that not so long ago had touched her shoulder gingerly, tenderly, as Alex fumbled her way towards asking for another chance to talk).

“We’re gonna be so happy, Alex, you and me. Ride or die, remember?” Too late, Maggie realises what she said, and chokes, “You can’t die on me, Alex, please, we’re supposed to end up together.”

Hot, salty tears break through, then, sliding down her own flushed cheeks. Humiliation washes over her because she’s supposed to be keeping it together, reassuring Alex, whose life is draining from her in rapid, jerking breaths. 

“We’re meant to be,” Maggie laments.

One last surge of sentience graces Alex’s eyes as she tries to smile again; “Meant to-” she murmurs, stammering; “...be.”

And she stills. She leaves Maggie with a soft gurgling sound, and then there is nothing at all. 

Those beautiful brown eyes that had been so full of life, of expression, fade into fixation. Maggie has seen an entire spectrum of emotion swim in them, joy, sorrow, rage, lust, confusion; they had all flashed in those eyes. She has witnessed love in those eyes. 

Now, she sees nothing. 

Maggie has watched people die before, she knows the signs. Clumsily she reaches out, pawing at Alex’s eyelids with her fingertips, hiding her glazed-over stare, unwilling to accept what she knows she is seeing.

“I love you,” Maggie croaks, begging, like it would bring her back. “I love you, please, I love you-” 

Like a mantra, she repeats it until Alex’s slack features become too much and she sinks her face forward into the crook of her elbow, sobs wracking her frame. 

“Agent Danvers!” Behind her, someone crashes through the undergrowth, twigs snapping in their haste to get closer. “Ma’am, I got in contact with-”

Footfalls slow as they grow closer, and then stop abruptly. 

“Agent Danvers?”

Even when Supergirl and J’onn both land minutes later, when Kara panics because she can’t hear Alex’s heart beating, when J’onn tries to blindly console her while staring at the wreckage, when the quiet of the forest gives way to chaos and agony and screaming and gnashing of teeth;

Even when grief descends upon them like the darkness of the dusk, sucking away the light, Maggie never once lets go of Alex’s hand. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting the prompt at the end so it doesn’t spoil anything. Set sometime after Maggie and Alex have broken up, but when it isn’t as new and raw.

“You’ve got a visitor, ma’am.”

Swirling a beaker with crimson fluid, Alex spun around to see Vasquez at the mouth of the lab. She carefully looked at her watch without spilling any liquid. 

“I’m not expecting anyone,” she said, frowning. She set the beaker down and picked up another, this time with a maroon liquid. She lifted it and spied black particles floating inside. “It’s almost 9. Is it urgent?”

“I don’t think it’s urgent, but I think it’s important.”

Alex raised an eyebrow, glancing up as Vasquez clasped her hands behind her back. Swishing the liquid around, she watched how the particles danced in the dark fluid. “Who is it?”

Vasquez shuffled from foot to foot. “It’s Detective Sawyer, ma’am.”

Clutching the beaker before it slipped out of her fingertips, Alex’s eyes flew up to the agent. Immediately, the evasiveness made sense. 

“Did she say why?” Alex asked evenly, setting down the test and pulling off her safety goggles.

“No, ma’am. She just asked for you,” Vasquez said awkwardly.

Craning her head as she tugged off her plastic gloves, Alex spotted Maggie lingering at the top of the stairs, staying out of the way of the agents breezing past her. She met Alex’s eye through the window, inclining her chin in greeting. It was so casual, so slight, but it made Alex’s heart rate soar. 

Alex got up, checking that everything was in its right place on her desk, and then walked over to the doorway.

“Are you okay?” Vasquez asked lowly. 

Bemused at the coyness, Alex asked, “Do you want to know as a fellow agent or as a friend?”

“Both?”

She scuffed the heel of one boot against the toe of another, rubbing off some dried splatter from the tests that had eaten up most of her evening. “I will be.”

During the Daxamite invasion, when Alex had jumped from the balcony, there was a second when the adrenaline pulsed through her weightless body, when everything seemed as clear and in focus as they had ever been. And then in the next, the balcony fell out of sight and she was falling backwards without guarantee that she would reach the ground safely.

She felt like that now, caught in the space between clarity and uncertainty, something familiar and foreign, walking towards Maggie. While they had been apart for just over three months, they saw each other semi-regularly. Each time, Alex’s heart throbbed at the how caged they were by their jobs, how formal and sharp they were with each other.  The line between them was no longer blurred between professional and private, it was rigid and strict. 

And while she had been the one to drive the bullet home, it didn’t hurt any less. 

Maggie was stretched back against the railing of the staircase, as calm as she had ever seemed.

“Hey,” she greeted. 

“Hey,” Alex returned, glancing around at the curious, prying looks they received from agents passing them. “This is a pretty late visit. What are you doing here?”

Maggie’s eyebrows raised, pushing off the balcony. “Do I have to book an appointment, now?”

Alex crossed her arms tight over her chest, making sure Maggie couldn’t see the trembling in her hands. “Well, this visit is a professional one, right?”

Sizing her up, Maggie huffed and replied, “Yes.”

“So?”

“So, the boss sent me to go and collect some prototype of a weapon.” She pulled out a folded piece of paper from her jacket, handing it to Alex. “NCPD are holding a series of training seminars dealing with specialised arms next week. It’s about time more of the force were aware of what we’re up against.”

Alex scanned the specifications, scoffing once she recognising the weapon in question. She waved the crumpled paper between them. “You aren’t getting one of those.”

“What, why?” Maggie said, snatching the paper back.

“Firstly, protocol is 3 days for a proper log and non-emergency book out. Secondly, the NCPD wants to borrow a weapon that literally evaporates any earthly matter? No way.”

“That really isn’t for you to say, Danvers,” Maggie replied curtly, folding the paper and stuffing it back into her pocket. “J’onn approved it. I’m just here to pick it up.”

“Well, go ask him then. You don’t need me.”

“I…” Maggie trailed off, looking down into the mouth of the DEO, where J’onn stood talking to Winn, pointing at his computer screen. Alex watched her shoulders sag, the fight leaving her with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I just know you have access and he’s busy with the Wordkillers and I guess I just assumed...wrong.” 

And just like that, just like she always did, Alex melted. She drew a step closer, lowering her voice.

“Maggie, I don’t mean it like that. It’s a serious weapon. Something like that has to be cleared officially.”

“I already told you, it  _ is _ cleared officially. Are you saying I’m lying about only being here to pick it up?”

Alex weighed up the options for answering the question, which had an obvious undercurrent. She really did not want to be dragged under; she was just about treading water when it came to Maggie. Protocol was protocol, but checking would just be patronizing. 

Backed into a corner, she curled her toes in her boots, looking away and composing herself before spinning on her heel. 

“Fine,” Alex relented, striding towards the elevators. “Follow me.”

“Okay, Agent Danvers,” Maggie said sarcastically, trotting along behind. 

Despite the thousands of perfectly innocent, viable questions circling in Alex’s head, her jaw seemed sewn shut, and so the pair didn’t speak on their way to the elevator, nor did they speak inside, their only other company being the groans and shudders of their descent. It stung, remembering how they had built up such a strong sense of trust and communication, and now they struggled make small talk. 

It was only when they entered the armoury, heading for the area with all of the confiscated and untested weapons that Alex noticed the slump in Maggie’s shoulders and broke the silence.   

“You okay?”

“Kinda been sent on a wild goose chase this morning, picking things up for this stupid seminar next week,” Maggie said, rubbing the back of her neck. “Just my luck that the trail ends here.”

With a pang of guilt, Alex strolled forward through the stacks of weapons and armour.

“I’m sorry this is weird,” she said, ducking under a barrel sticking out of a shelf. 

“It’s okay. It’s to be expected, really.” 

It sounded so deflated, and Alex looked back at her as they reached the restricted room. Maggie stopped a few paces behind, playing with the badge on her hip, not looking up. 

Alex placed her palm onto the biometric scanner, and a tremolo of beeps granted them access into the specialised inventory. “I don’t mean to make this harder on you.”

“It’s fine,” Maggie said. “I can just get the gun and go if that’s easier for you?”

The door was lodged shut, and with a grunt or two of frustration, Alex shouldered it until it opened. She rubbed her bicep through her uniform, partly grateful for the distraction from the loaded question. Shaking her head, she inspected the hinges. 

“This hasn’t been fixed since the Daxamite invasion,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “They were trying to get in here for these weapons, I guess.”

Maggie scoffed, her gaze roaming around the shelves and glass cases of the room. “How is it that you guys have millions of dollars worth of equipment down here, but you can’t repair your buckled doors?”

Alex smiled, but all of a sudden, being back in this room, no one else on this floor with them, felt intense, like the air pressure in the room dropped. 

Because of her rank and status as an agent, she was one of the only people in the building that had access to this room. In the past, that meant it was a private, quiet place for them to zip away and enjoy themselves, especially when their relationship was in that honeymoon phase, when pleasure with another woman was new to her and addictive to the point where she didn’t always trust herself to keep her hands off of Maggie.

Alex wedged the door as wide as it would go, trying to push away thoughts of how many slow afternoon hours they spent down here kissing, laughing, screwing-

“You know, I’ve never paid attention to all the stuff down here.” 

Yanked back into reality from ghost hands and mouths, Alex made a strangled noise in her throat, causing Maggie to whirl around and face her. 

“You okay, Danvers?”

“Yeah!” Alex answered, much too quickly if Maggie’s eyebrows raising told her anything. She brushed invisible lint from her shoulder. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Maggie didn’t look like she bought it, but turned away anyway. She gravitated over to a red and black cube, the size of a fist, enclosed in a glass case. Alex watched her tap at it, how she tilted her head curiously before moving on and picking up a headset. Clicking a button on the side, the set lit up blue. 

“You remembering how we used to make out down here?” Maggie asked, idly running a thumb over the blue, pulsing glow of the psychic blockers. 

“We did more than that,” Alex said under her breath, looking away as her stomach tightened at the flash flood of memories. She advanced, parallel to Maggie, her attention staying on the safety of the opposite shelf. 

“We did,” Maggie mused, crossing over to her shelf. Alex forced herself to stand her ground, and not escape to the other side of the aisle. 

Maggie skittered her gaze along other items on offer, in no rush to get the evaporator. She paused at a folded rifle. “What’s that thing?”

Alex took a deep breath and came closer. “Kryptonite gun prototype. We halted testing on it when Kara started working with us-” 

Maggie turned to face her suddenly, stopping Alex dead in her tracks. They were uncomfortably close, and Alex wanted to put more space between them but felt trapped by the fear of making it too obvious. 

“That green stuff in the gun is kryptonite?”

The question was perfectly reasonable in theory, but it was voiced in a low purr, and Alex couldn’t stop the sinking heat that trickled through her stomach at the noise. 

“Yes and no. Its a compound of kryptonite,” Alex said, and then cleared her throat, gesturing to the gun. “I tampered with it after one of the prototypes had a leak. I went home with it all over my hands and had to avoid Kara for a few days until all of the residues were gone.”

Maggie nodded, stepping back to inspect the gun closer. Two fingertips danced along the grooves in its barrel. 

Alex searched for a way to make the situation less tense between them, and let out an attempt at chuckle, waving her hand towards the rifle. 

“You know, thinking about that spillage kinda reminds me of that time with the green ink.”

Maggie’s brow furrowed, and she squinted in concentration. Alex thought she was ignoring the statement to study something on the gun, but then she turned in confusion instead. 

“Green ink?”

Alex blinked. “You-you don’t remember?”

She tried to sound more astonished than wounded, but it fell flat even to her own ears. It had been a memorable moment, when Maggie came home to find Alex haunched at her laptop. Engrossed in the tests results on her screen, she hadn’t noticed, but a green pen had bust in the pocket of her blouse, soaking it in emerald liquid. When Maggie pointed it out, she had looked down in horror at the ruined shirt, before managing to smear green ink all over her hands. 

She had scrubbed in the shower, but her palms and chest were stained green for a few days, prompting Maggie to tease her about her alien skin. It was a running joke between them for a while.

Yet now Maggie didn’t remember it at all. 

There was a charged moment as Maggie’s eyes widened, but before Alex could ask if she  _ did _ remember, there were lips on hers.  

Stunned, Alex’s reaction was delayed, but she kissed back. She was unsure of what exactly had prompted it, unsure of anything outside of Maggie’s kiss.

She was turned towards the shelf and pushed against it, letting out a sharp whine at the bolts jabbing into her shoulder blades. And while the taste of Maggie was familiar, the kisses weren’t. The hands were like they belonged to someone else, moving with unfamiliar patterns. 

Even while she was flying blind into impulse and terrible decisions, something uneasy settled in Alex’s gut, and she pulled back with a frown. 

“What?” Maggie breathed, eyes flicking between Alex’s mouth and eyes. “What’s wrong?”

_ You aren’t kissing me the way you… _ Alex shook her head, protesting weakly. “Maggie, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Her eyes stayed on Alex’s lips, then. “Do you want to be doing this?”

Alex swallowed thickly, unable to deny it. “Yes, but-”

“So, let’s get back to it.”

Swept up in the heat that enveloped them, Alex relaxed into the kisses, unrestrained. 

Barely a few seconds later, they were broken apart by the lights cutting out and the base sirens wailing. The room was engulfed in an undulating red glow as the alarms blared.

Maggie blinked in surprise, wriggling out of Alex’s embrace and stepping away from her body.

“Danvers,” she said, looking towards the door.

The emergency shutter emerged from the top of the doorway and started to creak as it sank. 

“Let me just-” Alex said, cutting off as her phone started ringing. It was Vasquez. Staring up at the ceiling in confusion, as if to notice any commotion, she answered.

“Why aren’t you using your walkie talkie, and what the hell’s-”

_ “Agent- nvers- white- can-?” _

After thirty seconds of static, Alex gave up. Ending the call and slipping her phone back into her utility belt, she reached into her waistband, free hand curling around her alien gun. 

“Just what we need,” she mumbled, getting lost in the siren. 

She looked around at Maggie, whose eyes darted from the flashing alarms to the weaponry and then to Alex. 

“What’s happening?” she shouted, voice raised over the sharp tones.

“Should be nothing, hopefully!” Alex yelled back.

Just before the shutter reached halfway down, a blur of red and blue slid into the room. 

“Alex!” Supergirl shouted. 

“Kara?”

The shutter rattled as it reached the floor, and the sirens cut out. Alex’s ears rang in the quiet.  

Kara’s hair was wild, as were her eyes. She pointed past Alex. “Alex, that isn’t Maggie.”

“What?” Maggie spluttered.  

“You’re a white martian,” Kara growled, squaring her shoulders.  

Alex took several steps back, putting space between herself and Maggie, whipping out the gun and pointing it straight at Maggie’s chest. The detective jumped, throwing her arms up in surprise and slinking backwards. 

“Woah, woah! What the hell?” she yelled, reaching into her waistband for her own weapon. 

“Freeze!”

“Alex, it’s me,” Maggie argued, letting go of her gun to hold up her hands.

“They found Maggie tangled up in webbing in a conference room,” Kara said.

Alex stood her ground, but spared a worried glance in her sister’s direction. “Is she-?”

“She’s fine, Alex,” Kara assured. 

Maggie, alarmed, spread her palms out wider. Alex didn’t have enough in her to feel angry, or betrayed. She just felt humiliated. “Goddamnit.”

“How the hell do we know it isn’t her?” Maggie accused, pointing at Kara. “Come on, Alex.”

She chanced a step closer, and Alex shook her head in warning, jabbing her gun in the air to keep her rooted to the spot. “Don’t move, or I  _ will _ shoot.”

Maggie dropped her arms, hands fisting at her sides. With every pass of the red light over her face, Alex could see the fear in the eyes fixed to her alien gun. “Just my luck that this is how I die. Some evil alien pretending to be Supergirl telling my ex fiancee to take me out.” She shrank back as Alex advanced a step, turning her face away slightly. “At least make it quick.” 

It was washing over her in waves. Why Maggie hadn’t responded to the joke about the green ink, why she had kissed her to distract her, to emotionally manipulate her. 

“It’s not her, Alex. Take the shot.” 

_ Wait.  _

Alex dropped her shoulders at the callousness. Slowly, she twisted to face her sister. “Kara would never make me shoot to kill.”

Exasperated, Kara took a step closer. “I  _ know _ , but J’onn has given you authorisation. He said all agents have the go ahead to shoot.” Kara tipped her chin higher. “Alex, think about it.”

“Danvers?” Maggie prompted as Alex raised the gun, aiming for the House of El crest. “Hold on a second-”

_ Why is it that I always have to choose between the two of you? _

“Think,” Kara said, now focused on the alien gun. “Think about this.”

“Danvers, put it down, alright? I’m sure it ain’t her, it’s someone roving around upstairs.”

Neither of them seemed like themselves, and honestly, Alex didn’t trust herself to make this decision. She widened her stance, pressing back and putting them into more of a triangle formation. 

“I can’t tell,” she uttered, waving the gun in an arc between them.

Kara glared at Maggie, and then spoke again. “Think, Alex. Why were you and Maggie down here in the first place?”

Alex flushed, thinking about how Maggie had pressed her against the shelves, feeling the imprint of bolts and reinforcements against her shoulders blades. But then the fog cleared and she remembered-

“Damn.” 

It was Maggie’s voice, but it sent a chill down Alex’s spine as she spun and watched it lift the kryptonite gun prototype from the shelf, clicking the barrel up into place and aiming it at Kara’s chest. 

“And here I was looking forward to getting your tongue back in my mouth, Agent Danvers. So easily played with a pout and a kiss,” it purred, smirking. “Could have been interesting to see how far you would go. I have all her memories. I know exactly what you two got up to in this room.”

“Alex,” Kara urged. 

But while Alex stepped into the line of fire, putting herself back between Kara and the white martian, Alex couldn’t pull the trigger. 

“Put it down,” she said, hating how the alien’s lips curled into a smirk at the tremble in her voice. 

“We both know you can’t do it, Agent Danvers. Not when I’m wearing her face.” 

“Alex,” Kara said, pitched a touch higher. “Alex, it isn’t her. We’ve got her, she’s safe.”

“That’s why you wanted that damn evaporator. I let you down here without even checking with J’onn because I trusted-” Alex gritted her teeth. “I’m so  _ stupid _ .”

“The technology for the evaporator was  _ ours _ to begin with. We’re taking it back, if not now, then soon. Should there be a chance of intergalactic war, we think it would come in pretty handy...” It cocked the end of the rifle, squinting as it aimed squarely at Alex’s chest. “I know you aren’t affected by this compound like the kryptonian is, but I figure the blast alone will bust your heart cleanly out of your body all the same.” 

“Alex,” Kara called behind her, the panic at Alex’s frozen form evident. “Alex?”

The martian clicked the side of the weapon, locking the kryptonite into place and engaging the gun. It began to hum, the green glow intensifying. It grinned, pleased. 

_ Maggie’s grin.  _

“You can’t do it,” it taunted. “You can’t kill her. You’ll let me kill you before you shoot the love of your life.”

“Alex, don’t listen to it-” Kara called.

“You know it’s true,  _ Kara _ ,” it sneered. 

“Shut up,” Alex said, adjusting her grip on the gun. “Just shut up.”

“Is it cause I sound like her?” It tipped its head, Maggie’s hair falling around the shoulders of the leather jacket it wore. “What do you want the last thing you’ll hear on this Earth to be? Just ask. I take requests. You want me to tell you how much I love you? Or maybe say your name like she used to?” 

“Alex, it isn’t Maggie,” Kara warned.

And yet, with each pass of the red flashes on the martian’s face, Alex couldn’t reconcile that it  _ wasn’t _ Maggie. 

It moved a finger, hooking around the trigger of the kryptonite gun, and Alex braced for impact.

“Alex-!” Kara cried.

“I’m sorry,” Alex whispered, closing her eyes.

She pulled her trigger faster.

The aqua blast hit the martian square in the chest, knocking it backwards. The rifle crashed to the ground, the kryptonite chamber cracking with the impact and green liquid seeping out onto the floor.

Alex lowered her gun, putting out a hand as she heard boots behind her. “Stay back, it could hurt you.”

And yet, isolated, watching the alien’s body writhe in pain, Alex wanted Kara to hold her together. The martian rolled onto its back, hand over the scorched patch on its chest.

“Alex,” it groaned, remaining in Maggie’s form as a final taunt. “Alex.”

Seeing Maggie’s face crumpled in agony, she took one step towards it, but a hand slipped around her bicep. 

“Alex, it’s not real.” Kara’s hand gripped her bicep, drawing her away from the twitching alien. “It’s not her.”

Alex couldn’t take her eyes off the martian until it finally stilled, Maggie’s eyes staring blankly up at her. She knew, underneath the shock of the sight, that this had been necessary. That it was a genocidal alien who had come to infiltrate, to deceive her into handing over one of the most dangerous handheld weapons on Earth so it could wreak havoc. And yet seeing Maggie’s lifeless body, how easily it had gotten her to let her guard down and used that love against her...

“Come on. She’s upstairs,” Kara said quietly. “Let’s go get her.”

Alex called up to the control room, informing them that the martian had been neutralised, tearing her eyes from the body and refusing to give it another glance. Vasquez confirmed that Maggie had been found entangled in a conference room, and Alex heard her tapping at her keyboard. Within a few seconds, the main lights went back on and the shutter squeaked as it slowly raised up. 

“They’ll send a team down to deal with that,” Alex said, waving over her shoulder and putting her gun and phone back into her utility belt. “Quickly, I hope.”

Kara smiled sadly, squeezing her bicep one more time before finally breaking the contact. They stood side by side, watching as the shutter squealed and wiggled precariously. 

Alex glanced at Kara, whose brow was furrowed in concentration. 

“What?”

Kara looked over her shoulder at the martian, and then at Alex, glee in her eyes. 

“What it said about your tongue being in-”

Alex ducked under the shutter as soon as it was at a decent height, cheeks flaring up in embarrassment. 

“Not now, Kara.”

~

Puking in the trashcan of a DEO conference room is not how Maggie imagined her evening going. 

She had finished her shift in the afternoon and, after closing two cases at the weekend, was rewarding herself with an early night off. Walking to her bike in the underground garage of the precinct was the last thing she remembered. 

She sat back against the wall, shivering and panting, hoping that the room would stop tilting on its axis. Keeping her head between her knees, she recalled flashes, like a dream, but they didn’t line up. 

A bottle of water and purple mouthwash swung into her eyeline. She looked up, seeing Alex fighting a smile. 

“Sucks, huh?” she said, indicating the wastebin a few feet away. 

Maggie nodded her thanks, taking the mouthwash and shaking it. Unscrewing the cap and filling it, she wondered why the martian had gone after her. She knocked back the mouthful, savouring the slight burn in her gums before putting the cap on the bottle and swapping it back for the water bottle.

“You know,” Alex said, taking back the mouthwash. “It appeared as you.”

Maggie hummed in question, leaning over to spit into the trash, before opening the bottle and taking a few long pulls. 

“Yup. It was…” Alex tightened the cap on the mouthwash. “Well, doesn’t matter. It’s dead now.”

A sickly damp sweat over her entire body, Maggie sat back against the wall where she was perched, looking up at Alex playing with the bottle of mouthwash in her hand. She sipped at the water, watching her ex carefully, wondering what the hell could be going through her mind.

Alex tapped the mouthwash, glancing back at the agents clearing up the webbing. “You want a ride home?” 

“Yeah, I think my bike is still at the station.”

Alex nodded, holding a hand out to help her up. After taking a second to ground herself, she took it, hauling herself to her feet. Whether it was a good idea or not, she sagged against Alex’s frame, unsteady on her feet. 

“It’s okay,” Alex murmured, dropping the mouthwash to the floor and adjusting her hold on Maggie’s waist. “We’ll take a vehicle. Not so sure you’re up for a ride on the back of my Ducati right now.”

Maggie exhaled, relieved as all thoughts of clinging to Alex and trying to suppress the need to vomit left her mind. She let Alex help her as they moved towards the elevator, too sore and out of it to protest.

“Do you remember anything?”

“No,” Maggie said, trying to ignore the warmth and scent of Alex pressed against her. “I could hear voices I recognised, like you and Kara, but they were garbled, like you guys weren’t really saying words.”

Alex jabbed a finger onto the button, calling the elevator. “Did you see anything?”

Maggie squinted, trying to piece together the flashes of colour in her mind, but shook her head. “I think it was dark?”

“Oh,” Alex said. 

Hearing the heaviness in that single sound, Maggie’s world tilted again, this time with apprehension. “Why? What happened?”

The elevator pinged as the doors parted and Alex helped her shuffle inside. Pressing the floor for the garage and ignoring Maggie’s inquiry, Alex looked her up and down and asked, “Are you okay to stand?”

“Sure.” She considered if she should be worried about Alex ducking out of answering her question, with how she withdrew, but she was sapped of energy. 

The doors opened onto the cool garage, and she trundled after Alex, who went to speak with an agent checking tire pressure on one of the larger, tank-like vehicles. Maggie savoured the lower temperature, which was much more pleasant on her clammy skin. 

Alex returned, jingling a set of keys. They reached one of the large SUVs, and it unlocked, she said, “You’re quiet.”

“Wouldn’t you be if you…” Maggie frowned, remembering the night of the Barenaked Ladies concert. “Wait, nevermind.”

“Yeah, it’s not pleasant,” Alex agreed, climbing into the driver’s side. 

Maggie gingerly got into the passenger side, pulling on her belt and then sinking against the plush leather seat. The rumble of the engine coming to life vibrated down to her bones, and the aching in her skull became duller. 

“I killed it, by the way, to answer your question about what happened. It was gunning for me and Kara,” Alex said, eyes flitting to the rearview mirror as they pulled out of the underground. “It was a close shave. If there was any doubt in my mind about it not being you, I couldn’t have pulled the trigger.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Maggie replied, rolling her head on the seat. “But just so you know, I don’t plan on trying to kill your sister any time soon.”

“Good to hear,” Alex echoed, fingers tapping the steering wheel as they pulled up to an intersection. “Also, I don’t really know where we’re going.”

“Shit yeah,” Maggie edged, waving a hand lazily ahead. “I’ll direct you. Go right here.”

After a few minutes of driving in silence - bar directions- she fixed her attention on the city lights sweeping across Alex’s profile. “How did you know for sure it wasn’t me?” 

Alex watched the traffic scooting by alongside them, and in the very way that she stiffly held herself in the driver’s seat, Maggie knew that she was definitely withholding something, choosing her words carefully. Even with the pain thumping between her temples, Maggie started to mentally list all the possibilities of what could have happened. 

“Two ways,” Alex eventually replied. “It might have been good at impersonating you, but I made a reference to the green pen, uh,  _ incident _ . It didn’t get it.”

“The…?” 

And then she saw it as clearly as if she were still there that day, Alex softly groaning in realisation as she looked down at her ruined shirt, turning her hands over and seeing the emerald smears across her palms. She laughed, leaning her head back against the headrest. 

“Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t let that slide,” Alex said as the lights turned green. “Why were you coming to the DEO anyway?”

“I wasn’t. I just woke up there. It must have kept me there to keep the bond as strong as possible.” Maggie pressed her fingertips to her temples, willing the throbbing to go away. “Guess it used me as a way in, since I still have access.”

“Oh,” Alex said. “Well, it did a pretty good impression of you. I mean, I was fooled and I…” The pause grew uncomfortable, but Maggie stayed quiet, looking at her and silently prompting. Alex shifted gear with a sigh. “I mean, I liked to think I knew you better than that.”

“But you worked it out eventually, right?”

“I didn’t really work it out,” Alex admitted. “Kara came into the room at the last minute. I just trusted her because I knew in my gut something wasn’t right.”

They came to the bottom of the avenue, and Maggie nodded to the left. “This is it.”

The car crawled around the corner and then Alex brought it to a stop, ducking her head and staring out at the building. Since this was Alex’s first time seeing her new location, the friendly, practised goodbye died on Maggie’s tongue.  

“It’s a nice place,” Alex said softly, gaze skittering up the side of the apartment building before falling to the dashboard again. The hurt that Maggie saw in her features was clearly making her shy.

“Yeah, it’s nicer than the place I had before...”  _ Before I moved in with you.  _ Maggie rolled her neck, rubbing the back of it. And then her hand stilled. “Wait, what was the other way?”

“What?” Alex said, distracted as her phone lit up with a DEO alert in the space between them. 

“You said there were two ways. What was the second?”

Alex’s fingertips froze, hovering over her phone. She sat up slowly, glancing in the rearview mirror again like she was worried there was someone in the backseat. “It didn’t kiss like you did.”

It sunk in slowly, and then; “You  _ kissed  _ it?! _ ” _

“It kissed me!” Alex retorted defensively, and then muttered, “It was a distraction. I thought it was you.” 

Maggie settled back against the seat, the click of her seatbelt unbuckling like a gunshot in the cabin. She let it slide out of her grasp, zipping slowly, not quite releasing it completely.

“You kissed an alien, Danvers. How does that feel?”

“I’m a little humiliated.” Alex shrugged, sheepish, and then looked down at the fidgeting hands in her lap. “Hurts, really.” 

Maggie really thought about pushing it, asking what had happened in detail. Why did Alex let the alien kiss her? How was their kissing different? Did they talk things out, or did Alex push it away?

“Hey Alex?”

The woman raised her head, eyes glimmering even in the darkness of the cabin, and before she second guessed herself, Maggie leaned over. She kissed Alex soundly, and then opened the door and got out. Her whole body thrummed as she leaned back in, seeing Alex’s wide eyes. 

“Just so you know it’s really me,” she explained, not completely lying. 

Alex swallowed, nodding, apparently unable to form words. 

Maggie grinned. “Night, Danvers. Hope you don’t get caught up in another web.”

“I think it’s a little late for that,” Alex replied, holding her gaze.

Maggie pursed her lips, nodding once again, and then closed the door, the tinted windows concealing Alex’s wounded expression. She trudged towards her building, wondering if Alex tasted the minty mouthwash on her lips. 

She regretted getting into the elevator as soon as the doors slid shut, her body still not accustomed after the trip was that being impersonated by a white martian. She leaned back against the mirrored wall and breathed through her nose.

Rooting for her keys in her pocket, Maggie stepped out onto her floor. Her phone buzzed, and when she saw  _ Alex _ on the notification, her stomach dropped with dread. She entered her apartment and read the text at the same time. 

_ Forgot to mention, you have to come to the DEO tomorrow for testing. Just to make sure you’re physically sound.  _

Just inside the threshold, Maggie was figuring out what to reply when the message was swiftly followed by another-

_ Which I’m sure you are. There shouldn’t be any lasting effects.  _

And then another-

_ But just incase, you know. We have to check. _

When there was no fourth message, Maggie typed out her reply.  _ Okay. Call me in the morning.  _ She hesitated, almost putting her phone down, and then added some final words before sending;  _ Goodnight, Danvers.  _

After a brief stop at the kitchen for water and painkillers, Maggie stripped to her underwear and headed for the bathroom. Waiting for the fuzziness of the medication to kick in, she was bleary enough to only realise she had brought her phone into the bathroom with her when it buzzed again. 

_ :) Goodnight.  _

She put her phone onto the sink, reached for her toothbrush and smeared white paste onto it. Brushing her teeth and staring straight into her own eyes, questions continued buzzing around her head. Why had she kissed Alex? Why hadn’t she pushed when Alex talked about kissing the martian as _her_?

She spat into the sink, rinsing out her mouth, her empty stomach clenching as the tablets dissolved. She splashed some cold water on her face and then gripped the edges of the porcelain basin.

When Alex had come back from Kara’s apartment the night of the last attack by the white martians, she had said that it was like a dream, vivid and powerful. She told Maggie, stripping off at the side of the bed, that the bond had been so strong, it had gone both ways. Exhausted, and apologetic, she had crawled into Maggie’s arms and fallen into sleep almost immediately, and with Alex so soft and needy, Maggie could never stay annoyed with her. Besides, she didn’t exactly ask to be knocked unconscious and her form used by a hostile alien. 

But one thing that she had never pushed was a series of steamy texts that Alex had sent after she left the apartment for the DEO. They had been so  _ explicit _ in a way that Alex rarely had been; promises about exactly how Alex was going to thank her for getting the VIP tickets for the concert, and Maggie remembered the thrills that had raced through her blood at the very thought.  

Fumbling the bathroom light off, Maggie shuffled out of the bathroom, carefully typing out the question. Again, unable to bar off the impulsive desire to  _ know _ , she sent the text. 

_ By the way, those texts you sent me the night of concert, just after you left your place. Were they the martian?  _

Almost immediately, the three dots bounced and disappeared, and then bounced and disappeared again. On the fifth disappearance, they stayed gone and Maggie resigned herself to the fact that she had pushed too far. 

She clicked her phone into darkness, putting it on the nightstand and staring at the ceiling. A patch of light stretched towards the centre of the room. She felt her blood thickening with the painkillers, her eyelids dropping. 

And then her phone buzzed. 

First, a red-faced, embarrassed emoji. And then-

_ Nope, all me. I sent them just before I went into the DEO.  _

Her heart lurched, and she set her phone to silent, locking it and putting it back on the nightstand for good. She closed her eyes, imagining what the next day would be like. She recalled the webbing that had been torn off of her as she woke groggily in the conference room. 

She spiralled into sleep, thoughts of their relationship swirling down with her. 

If there was one web she knew she would never escape, it was Alex. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maggie appearing as a white martian. Also, this was definitely partly inspired by 4:46 of this video. You...will see what I mean if you watch it ;)
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMoXAml33R4


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my ideal idea for the finale (3x23?), based on spoilers, speculation and imagination. I would want the season finale, as with previous years, to set up the next season. Enjoy :) x
> 
> Recommended listening: Glass Animals- Agnes (Imagine it playing over these scenes...)

Overlooking the city, thinking about the disaster they had helped to avert, Alex stared out and swore she saw literal freckles of dust settling. Heavy footsteps approached, and she knew without turning that it was J’onn. She smoothed down the front of her suit, pulling at the high collar, and laughing hollowly.

“So, what now?”

He leaned his elbows on the concrete balcony, looking down at the busy traffic way down below. “Now I have a very special task for you.”

She peered over the edge with him, remembering the rush of wind as she fell into Kara’s waiting arms when she jumped. “Really?”

He gave her a humouring look, and all at once she realised he was poking fun at her. “Always switched on, Agent Danvers.”

“I’m dedicated to my work, sir,” she deadpanned, showing off the DEO embossed magnets on her gloves. 

He chuckled, and then announced, “You’re going to take a vacation.”

Her smile dropped. “What? No way. No-”

“You’re going to take a vacation because this year has pushed you to your breaking point, emotionally and physically,” he stressed, flattening his palms against the concrete.  “You broke off your engagement, you were forced to save your sister’s life, you were almost killed multiple times, including a spate of almost fatal illness. You haven’t taken the time to process or deal with any of that.”

“But-” 

He held up a hand, stopping her protests and then turning to face her. With a quick glance to see they were alone, he stepped closer and gently braced his hands on her biceps. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but considering what happened with my father, well, it’s taken precedence.”

Alex bowed her head, unable to look him in the eye, knowing that he could probably sense the emotions radiating off of her anyway. He had faced so much loss in his life, and losing yet another loved one- she both admired his strength and mourned for him. 

“Take a vacation.”

“How-” 

“Take a vacation,” he repeated, harder this time, like  _ let me finish _ . “Clear your head.” He paused, then, “And when you come back, take this organisation out of my hands.”

She had geared up to refuse again when she caught the end of his sentence. “Wait. When you say take if out of your hands, you mean…?”

He nodded, dropping his arms back to his side and looking down into the depths of the building. “Lead the DEO.”

“J’onn,” she breathed. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll never be too far, Alex. And any time you need me, I’ll be there.” He smiled then, warm and fatherly, resting a hand back on her shoulder as he shook her slightly. “But I think you’ll do just fine.”

“I don’t-” She swallowed, the humidity itching at her. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything. Think about it.” J’onn lifted his hand and cradled the back of her head. “You’re dedicated, passionate, and immensely capable of being the next leader. It was an honour to train you, and it will be an honour to watch you lead.”

Softly, he pressed his lips to her forehead, and then he left her. She watched him go inside, a bittersweet ache taking hold. Considering the last few years, with Supergirl joining the DEO, with Maggie, with the way she had almost died so many times, she hadn’t really taken the time to thing about her career prospects. Yet any time she did imagine the future, J’onn had always been there by her side, supporting her. 

She couldn’t believe the blind spot; if she was to advance, he would surely have to have moved on?

“Alex?” She looked up to find Kara landing gently beside her, eyes swimming in concern. “Are you alright?”

Alex kicked the toe of her boot against the concrete wall, bouncing it a few times. “J’onn just asked me to be head of the DEO.”

Kara’s attention whipped from Alex to the DEO’s main room and back. “Oh, Rao.”

“I know.” Alex clenched her fists, the ridges of the magnets biting into her palms. “That’s crazy, right?”

Nibbling at her lower lip, Kara rocked back on her heels and narrowed her eyes. “I could see it.” She turned to face National City’s skyline, shoulders sagging. “It’s been a crazy year.”

“Sam and Ruby are safe, and so is the planet for another while.” Alex noticed that Kara was favouring her right foot as she held her weight, but didn’t mention it quite yet. “What happened in the end? With Lena?”

Kara’s profile flickered with hurt, gaze dropping to where her fingertips toyed with the thumbstraps of her suit. “I don’t think I can talk about that, yet. Everything’s still in the air with James and....” 

It was quiet, unsteady, and Alex gave her the space to pause for several moments to gather herself, standing straight and waving a hand. “Winn and J’onn are leaving, you’re going to lead the DEO, Mon El is gone again, CatCo is- I don’t even  _ know _ what’s gonna happen now.”

“I could have been married.” And just like that, she felt far more bitter than sweet. She cleared her throat. “It’s all changed, right?”

The skyline hadn’t. She could see cranes and scaffolding littered here and there, and in the closer streets, some of the visible storefronts had changed, but National City was more or less the same as always. Yet something both settled and stirred in the summer air, like a book closing and another being opened. Brand new, with leafy pages, Alex could almost pick up that bookstore smell. 

“It’s gonna be different,” Kara confirmed, but then looked over at Alex with a lopsided smile. “We’re still here.”

“We’ll get through it,” Alex said, reaching over to pry one of her sister’s hands from the nervous scrabbling and lace their fingers together.

Kara scrunched up her nose. “When you’re head of the DEO, do I have to call you ma’am?”

It drew a laugh, and Alex realised how foreign the sensation was. She sighed, tilting her head into the sunlight, wondering if things had really been so dark for this long. 

Kara beamed, and then softened, nudging their shoulders together. “I like that sound. I’ve missed it.”

Blushing, Alex squeezed their hands. It had been a neverending slew of destruction for months, and now it was finally over, they were surveying the wreckage. There was no telling what was next for them, but they were going to face it together. 

And that was just fine.

~

Having not seen her apartment for the better part of 4 days, Alex practically floated through the doorway, her bliss broken only by her heel skidding forward. 

Regaining her balance, she bent down and picked up what had caught her boot; a letter. Flipping it twice, she found no clue as to whom the sender was. She kicked the door closed and set the letter on the island, rooting through her fridge for a cool bottle of water. She twisted off the top, gulped half of it down in one go, and then ordered pizza from the app on her phone. 

Only then did she turn her focus back to the blank envelope, tearing open the top and shuffling out the neatly folded page inside. She flattened it, and at the sight of familiar handwriting, her heart stuttered in her chest. 

_ Alex, I hope you’ve been doing well.  _

_ This is going going to sound crazy, but I got a tip off about something really big. A case I’ve been working for a while just blew wide open. It’s overseas big - can’t communicate through insecure network channels big. I would have come by the DEO, but I figured with all the stuff with Reign, you guys were swamped. _

_ I’m in the squadroom right now and I can hear our feeds going crazy. You guys are probably out fighting. You’ll get out, I know it. And when you do, you need to decide whether to trust me or not.  _

_ Here’s a ticket for this Saturday. It’s an early flight to D.C., and from there, we’ve got to make some preparations to go abroad. Like I said, the nature of this case means that neither of us can trust usual communications. Don’t call. Don’t text. Either way, I don’t want to talk about this. Make a decision and stick to it. You’re good at that, right?  _

_ Take care, M xo  _

Sure enough, there was a plane ticket still in the envelope, having been missed when she took out the main letter. She took it out, checking the date and time, and considered calling Kara or J’onn, but knowing that subtext of the letter practically forbade her. 

“I guess I know why you needed your passport,” Alex mumbled, putting the letter and ticket on the island and covering her face with her palms. She was tired, she was  _ so _ tired. 

But Maggie needed her on a case, and hell if she was able to refuse that temptation, the very one that had gotten them into all the trouble in the first place. The call to go undercover, to work more cases together, the bond that formed, and deepened and, eventually, festered and broke. 

She had a choice to make, and she had no idea where to start emotionally, but she figured that as soon as her pizza came, she was on the hunt for her own passport.

“Vacation, huh?” she asked her empty apartment, her appetite suddenly gone.

~

It wasn’t easy to find her at first. Apparently everyone had chosen that morning to fly out of National City. Eventually, peering over the bustling crowd, she spotted Maggie in the airport cafe, reading off a notebook. 

It took her a further few minutes to actually reach the cafe, ducking and diving around fellow travellers, yanking her carry-on suitcase in frustration when it got stuck. Finally, she made it to the table. 

“Last time I was on a plane,” she said thickly, “I was planning how I was gonna come out to my sister.” 

Maggie raised her head. It was the first time they had seen each other since the break up, and Maggie’s composure unnerved her. She was calm, unsurprised as always, while Alex suspected she appeared as if she was being electrocuted.

“How’d that go?” Maggie asked levelly.

“Pretty good.” Alex heaved a sigh, taking the seat and looking around at the other tables. “National City to Oslo was a hell of a flight.”

Maggie’s eyes danced up and down her body for a few seconds, making her skin flush, before she flipped her notebook to a fresh page and scribbled something down. “Well, this isn’t Norway.”

She slid the notebook across the table. It was two simple words, but they sucked the breath from Alex’s lungs-

_ It’s Cadmus _ .

They both sat back at the same time, Maggie relaxing into her chair and Alex knocked back in shock. 

“Was working on a different case when some information about an old facility turned up,” Maggie explained, gaze slowly inching around the busy crowd. “I wasn’t sure how the hell my perp was connected to the whole thing, but I figured it was something.”

Remembering herself, Alex did the same, watching the people milling around them. Tourists moving out for summer vacation, people stifled in tight business suits, kids rambling to their parents about waterpark plans.

“So you investigated it?” she asked lowly.

Maggie smirked, bringing her attention back to Alex. “You know me, Danvers. I followed the trace.”

Alex thought about her sister; Kara had no idea about any of this, no one did. She had just called J’onn to confirm she would take up the offer of a month-long vacation, and then called in to the DEO’s office to book it off officially. When Kara inevitably asked why couldn’t just fly anywhere she wanted to go, Alex had surfed her enthusiasm about this being  _ good for her _ , and begged her sister off on the flimsy excuse of wanting the full, simple travelling experience. 

As if anything about sitting here in front of Maggie Sawyer was simple. 

Alex slid the notebook back across the table. “You did this for me?”

“I did this cause it’s the right thing to do.” Maggie capped the ballpoint pen and laid it down on top of the notebook. “But yeah, I know how personal this is for you.”

“You know, your-” Alex took a steadying breath, watching a small girl in the store across from the cafe beg her mother for a Supergirl toy. “Your letter was a little terse in places.”

For the first time, Maggie gave a small smile. “I wrote it a bunch of times. Figured it was best not to get too...involved.” She played with the dog-eared corner of her notebook. “Got a little worried with some of the news about the worldkillers, but I just…”

“Yeah, I know,” Alex said softly, hearing the heartache that Maggie had been trying to hide behind steel and sarcasm. 

The tannoy dinged in a four rising notes, and then the flight to D.C. was announced as boarding. Maggie closed her notebook, slipping it and the pen into a black carry-on that had occupied the seat beside her. 

Alex watched as she stood first, gripping the handle of the bag and lifting her passport from the coffee table. She lifted her chin. “Ready for one last adventure?”

Slinging her duffle bag over her shoulder, Alex rose gingerly, clutching her passport in both hands. She bit her lip and looked at the board which was announcing their flight as boarding at Gate 15. She took another deep, shuddering breath, knowing that if she said she was anywhere near ready, she’d be lying.

Instead, she looked her ex-fiancee dead in the eye in the middle of the jampacked airport cafe.

“Ride or die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I want Maggie back in season 4, I thought this could be an interesting way to tie her back into the main plot. If people were interested, I’ll write up what I’d want 4x01 to be like as well. Hope you enjoyed :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aaaaand some thoughts on 4x01 that spiralled out of control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the feedback on the previous chapter, I was blown away so thank you thank you. Big up to bloedhgarm who wrote some of that angsty sanvers dialogue with me, and to ironicpotential, who ran an eye over it. 
> 
> And if anyone spots the link between this and last night's December chapter, you get...a reward that I haven't thought of yet. Here's 4x01.

**Suggested listening:** _Ballad of the Mighty I- NGHFB_

 

 

~

**_National City_ **

She skimmed the final paragraph, drew a firm red line through the last sentence and then capped her pen in satisfaction. The clock on the wall said 6:01, her workload was done, and she was ready to go home.

Kara sat back, stretching her arms above her head and contemplating the clock high on the wall of her office. Eliza’s flight didn’t get in until 8, after which they had agreed to meet J’onn for a drink.

She stood, closing down the lid of her laptop and shuffling the papers she was reviewing back into her briefcase, her heart heavy as she realised that for the first time that she could recall, she was dreading the visit from her adoptive mother. Packing away her laptop and smoothing down her ponytail, Kara did one last sweep of the office before heading for the door.

It was J’onn’s final days with the DEO, and while Kara was pleased for what this could mean for Alex, the truth was that she wished none of this was happening at all. Change had come and gone, rattling them all around like dice in a fist, not caring what the consequences were when they rolled to a stop. They just had to deal with the numbers they were given.

She strolled along the corridor into the CatCo bullpen, politely bidding some of her colleagues a good night, her mood sinking with each step. Their transitional CEO after Lena was even less engaged than she had been, even when she disappeared from the workplace to help Sam try to overcome Reign. With Lena then severing ties with her, James dealing with his own dilemma, Winn and J’onn leaving and Alex on a different continent, Kara was isolated and, if she was honest, lonely.  

She passed the door of Snapper’s office, but was drawn back at a call of her name.

“Danvers?”

Kara popped back into the doorway. “Yes?”

“Forgot to tell you,” he said, more to the laptop in front of him. “You’re getting a mini-me on Monday. She’ll be here around 11am.”

Stunned, Kara took a moment to gather her wits before replying. “You mean, I’m getting a-?”

“Yeah. New hire. You need to show her the ropes, so to speak.” He continued to tap at his keyboard, his attention on the words he wrote rather than the woman in the doorway. “She’s good. Fresh blood might liven this place up a little after all the _mismanagement_.”

Snapper spat the word so venomously, that it was impossible not to know exactly what he was referring to.

Kara adjusted her glasses. “I’m sorry, what-?”

“I’ll brief you at 9 on Monday. Enjoy your weekend,” he said, waving her away, disinterested.

She scurried the rest of the way to the elevator, excitement cutting through the heaviness that had pressed on her.

 _Me, a mentor_ , she thought.

The minute her foot stepped out into the lobby, Kara had her phone in her hand. She practically jumped around as she waited for the reception to readjust after the elevator ride, and then immediately dialled Alex.

_“Mmm...hello?”_

“Alex! Hey, I just got some news,” she blurted, hopping from foot to foot. “I just talked to Snapper and he said-”

_“Kara…”_

“-that there’s a new hire starting on Monday and guess what-?”

_“Hey, uh, Kara-”_

“He wants me to mentor them! Me, a mentor!”

_“Kara! What time is it there?”_

“6. I’m just leaving work.”

_“Which makes it what time in Madrid…?”_

“Which-” She sagged slightly in realisation. “Oh, Alex, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

 _“S’fine.”_ Kara heard her shuffling around, the click of a light going on. _“It’s good to hear you so excited about something.”_

“Yeah.” That loneliness returned, sinking her mood like an anvil on an old cartoon, her respite from it only temporary. “Anyway, I should-”

A muffled voice spoke on the line, prompting Alex to rasp a soft; _“It’s okay, go back to sleep.”_

When they were kids, Kara was impressed at how Alex would finish an apple and chuck the core into the trash with an expert, practised aim. One day, she felt the courage to try herself, underestimating her strength. Not only did she miss the trash, the core bounded off the lid of the bin and tipped the garbage all over the kitchen floor, leaving a stinking, grungy mess that Alex refused to help clean up.

Kara felt like that now; so cheerful to share, so red-faced at the miss. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

_“Really, it’s fine.”_

Kara rocked back on the balls of her feet, turning to face the large canvas that covered one wall of the CatCo lobby. Awkwardness seeped into her bones, and she struggled with a weak joke in response. “So, you got seduced by a local.”

Alex chuckled lightly. _“When in Europe, right?”_

There was something off about the answer, but Kara suspected that she was probably just embarrassed. Frankly, she was surprised that Alex would even have another one night stand, after how it had affected her last time. Maybe this was a good sign; maybe she was finally ready to heal and move on.

“Good for you,” Kara said honestly, batting the briefcase against her knee. “I’m gonna go. Let you sleep a little longer.” Despite her slight discomfort, she smiled at her shoes, adding, “Or not, since I seemed to have woken up your European romance…”

 _“Goodbye, Kara,”_ Alex replied firmly, amusement in her voice.

Kara had the urge to tell Alex that she missed her, and would miss her at dinner the following night, but she hung up before she got the chance.

Disappointment leaking into the ventricles of her heart, making her feel cold inside, she slid her phone back into her pocket, gripped her briefcase, and walked out of the lobby.

 

 

~

**_4 miles south of Matersa, Spain_ **

Her boots crunched against the rocky ground, legs burning with exertion from the steep climb that they had been battling with for the last half hour. Alex adjusted the cap on her head, grimacing at the damp sweat of her forehead.

“We’ve been hiking for hours,” she complained, wrangling her water bottle from the side of her rucksack. She unscrewed the lid, took a long gulp, and then put it back, keeping the steady pace the whole time.

Maggie, always a few steps ahead, scoffed and replied, “You say that like you aren’t in peak physical condition.”

Alex groaned as she sidestepped a thorny bushel. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

“Thought you were a Californian? Can’t stand the heat?” Maggie threw back, glancing over her shoulder and snickering as Alex swiped her damp brow. “I knew a good hike would be the ruin of you, Danvers. You’re all muscle and no endurance.”

“I think you know I have plenty of endurance,” Alex said under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.” That particular conversation would have to be touched on another time, or even better, never at all. Switching tracks, she asked, “Are we almost there?”

“Patience,” Maggie said smugly.

In reality, Alex didn’t have a whole lot of patience left. All of this time galavanting across a foreign continent had just led them to one defunct location after another. Cadmus had been running rings around them, and she was no closer to finding her father than she was when she boarded the plane to D.C.

Another minute or so and they reached the summit of the incline, and then Alex was in awe. Sprawled out in the flatland below them were dozens upon dozens of solar panels, stretching out across the valley.

“Renewable energy, huh?” she quipped.

“It’s the future.” Maggie pointed at the tower in the centre of the solar field, which was about twenty stories tall. It stood high above the panels, an intimidating figure, as if it were omnipotent towards the surrounding structures. “That’s where we’ve gotta get into.”

She looked over her shoulder, flashing a toothy grin. Then, she began her descent into the valley. “Try not to get blinded by the panels.”

Alex took in the landscape in one broad view, and then focused on the panels individually. Searching for a reference point in the trees at the edge of the collective, she estimated that they were each were over twelve foot tall.

“God, look at those things.” She started down the hill after Maggie. “How much energy-”

“You know I love it when you nerd out, Danvers,” Maggie interrupted. “But there’ll be time for that later.”

Her eyes on the tower, Alex wondered if this would be another dead end in their search. Fixing the peak of her cap, she trained her attention on her feet. “You love it when I nerd out, huh?”

“Let’s…” Maggie tightened the straps on her rucksack, quickening her pace. “Talk about that later, too.”

“What _do_ you wanna talk about instead?”

Alex couldn’t help the slight sarcastic edge. After three and a half weeks, she was irritated at the game of push and pull that Maggie was playing. She was juggling enough pressure with every false lead they followed without the added personal conflict they had engaged in.

“Well, how do you feel about going home to take up the big boss job?”

Alex was always aware that an expiry date loomed over their heads. Eventually, she would have to return to the DEO and take over command. But seeds of hope had been sown that day in the airport cafe, and she had let herself fantasize about staying on track with this mission, seeing it through to the end, finding and freeing her father.

Her lack of answer made Maggie slow her pace. In the hunch of her shoulders, Alex saw the realisation kicking in. “You haven’t made up your mind yet, have you?”

“About going home?” Alex glanced at her to confirm whether that was what she meant. “No.”

“You barely have days until your flight, Alex.”

“About that-”

Maggie tripped, stumbling forward a few steps. Alex shot a hand out to help steady her, but before she could ask what happened, a wailing siren blared out from all sides, echoing around the valley. It rose to a screech and fell again, undulating like an old nuclear drill siren.

Alex looked down, seeing a peg uprooted from the ground where Maggie’s foot had caught it. She took off her cap, swiping the sweat from her brow, the hair on the back of her neck standing up at the siren.

“That can’t be good.”

 

 

~

**_National City_ **

“To the future!”

“The future!” Kara cheered. J’onn, Brainy and Eliza clinked their glasses to hers.

Kara took a healthy sip, and then remarked, “I think it’s sad Alex isn’t here for this. It would be nice to celebrate her promotion.”

“Yes and no,” J’onn replied. “It’s good that she finally choose to step back and seek respite. I think it could be exactly what she needs to get into a new headspace.”

“I’m immensely proud of her,” Eliza said, playing with the rim of her wine glass. “I always want to tell her but, well, you know what Alex can be like.”

“She never officially told me her decision,” J’onn said. “She could come back from Europe and decide she would rather have another director in place. I can imagine she might prefer to stay in the field.”

“Well, if she does take it,” Kara said. “She’s gonna kick ass.”

While J’onn and Eliza nodded, she couldn’t help but notice Brainy’s polite smile. Once again, those childish pangs of loneliness rattled through her. She couldn’t help looking at their empty plates, remembering a time when this apartment would have had raucous laughter and debates over who was and wasn’t cheating at game nights. That was gone, now.

Her phone vibrated. “Oh, Alex sent me another picture!” She opened the message, marvelling at the sunny photograph of a majestic building. “Wow.”

She tipped the phone towards Brainy, not wanting him to feel excluded.

“Madrid, you said? The Royal Palace, I assume,” Brainy observed, “Astounding.”

“You know, she’s doing a lot more sightseeing than I thought she would,” Eliza noted, as Kara tilted the screen to her and J’onn.

“A lot of monuments...” J’onn said contemplatively, more to himself than the others.

“Yeah, well, Alex isn’t exactly the selfie type,” Kara teased, making air quotations with her free hand.

“Yes, but- may I?” Brainy swiped through the pictures that Alex had sent over the previous three weeks, back and forth, and then glanced at Kara.

Seeing that he was silently asking her for possession, she flashed him an easy smile and handed over her phone. He left the app, and within thirty seconds, had seven internet tabs open, all with the landmarks that Alex had claimed she had been visiting. Leaning over Brainy’s shoulder, Kara watched as he matched the search engine results to the personal messages, the shadow of doubt falling around them.

“Unless your sister was a gifted photographer _which-_ ” He held up a finger- “She may well be, I suspected that these are not her own stills. And, as you can see,” he pointed the finger at the screen, “These are all from Google.”

“It can’t be-” She cut herself off, having seen it for herself. Eliza and J’onn got up and joined her, peering over Brainy’s shoulder as she stepped back. “But I saw her off at the airport.”

With a flourish of activity, Brainy handed the phone back to her and hurried over to the window. He took out his own cell, tapping furiously. Kara exchanged a concerned look with J’onn and Eliza, and then approached slowly. She had watched him spend hours rejigging the technology to suit his own futuristic visions, or at least within the limitations of what was possible in this year.

“Can you give me your sister’s number?” Kara rhymed it off, and Brainy nodded along, thumbs working at the screen. Then he held it up to the window, waiting until it beeped. Then he lowered it, squinted at numbers on the screen.

“What do they mean?” she asked.

“They’re…” He closed his eyes, bopping his head as if to a rhythm, and then clicked his fingers. “Spain.” He twirled to face all three of them. “Yes, her cell is pinging in Spain.”

Kara breathed out a relieved huff. “Brainy, of course it is. That’s where-”

“No, not Madrid. Further south. Those numbers…” He paced back to the table, stopping and starting several times like a stalling car. He set his own cell phone down on the table beside the stack of empty plates from dinner.

“Where is she?” Elisa asked, a tremor in her question as her eyes bounced from Kara, to J’onn and back to Brainy.

“Matersa,” Brainy announced.

“Far be it for me to hope Alex would actually take a vacation,” J’onn grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Maybe she’s just travelling right now?” Eliza offered, wringing her hands together. “It is early morning now in Spain, isn’t it? With the time difference? She could be on a train or-”

“No, it’s not travel,” J’onn said darkly.

Kara drank in his stern expression as he clicked his tongue and wandered away from them. “What do you mean?”

He propped his hands on his hips. “Matersa is the location of a base owned by a former shareholder in L-Corp. We believed it could be where some of their weapons development was taking place, but we never had enough proof to warrant a raid, especially on international soil.”

“L-Corp?” Eliza echoed, glancing between them.

“Even with Lena Luthor as the CEO, we considered it a possibility that Cadmus still had use of the base.”

“If Alex isn’t on vacation, and she’s in the same place as a suspected Cadmus facility,” Kara said carefully, “You don’t think she’s gone after a lead on her own, do you?”

Her only answer came in the form of three blank faces.

 

 

~

**_Matersa, Spain_ **

The stiff hostel door crashed open, finally giving way with the third shove of her shoulder.

With a grunt, Alex half-carried her companion over the threshold. One of Maggie’s arms was slung over Alex’s shoulders, and the other pressed against the bloody patch on her stomach. Together, they managed to hobble over towards the single bed, and Maggie collapsed down onto it with a cry of pain.  

“That was closer than I’d expected it would be,” she panted, half-chuckling.

“Way closer than I’d have liked, too,” Alex mumbled, kneeling next to her suitcase and rooting around for the first aid kit. “Up.”

Maggie snickered, pulling off her shirt and then bunching up the hem of the tank top. Alex snapped open the first aid kit, glancing at Maggie’s seeping wound. She lay the green box open on the floor and shuffled forward between Maggie’s knees. Circumstances aside, a familiar thrill tingled at the back of her skull.

Wanting to remain disciplined, she kept her eyes on the wound.

“Not too bad,” she mumbled.

“Feels a little bad,” Maggie replied, pulling a low chuckle from both of them.

Their eyes met, and that familiar ache took hold in Alex’s chest. This cubby hole of a hotel room had a bad draft, obscene teal coloured walls, and students underneath who would play 90s eurodance well into the night. But sharing the creaking, stiff mattress with Maggie curled against her the past two nights had made all of it worth it. And before that in Alacrucia, and before that-

Maggie’s eyes shifted away, and _there_ it was. The inevitable pull away, the inability to handle the intimacy that had grown once again between them. It left Alex feeling used and dirty, regardless of whether that was the intention or not. But she also felt weak, because she never refused it; she wanted it just as badly.

She scoffed, tearing open the box of rubber gloves. “Why won’t you let me in?”

Pulling on a pair, she set to work cleaning around the wound when Maggie answered with a purr.

“I don’t know about that Danvers. I think I’ve let you in a few times.”

Alex blushed as the thumping eurodance downstairs sent vibrations up her knees and thighs. What Maggie was implying was clear, but this comment flirted with unspoken boundaries, and she hesitated to give chase just to be shut out once again.

“Only after we’re thrumming with adrenaline from almost losing each other,” she replied pointedly, nodding to the wound. She was relieved that, once the crusted blood was wiped away, it didn’t seem nearly as severe. She rifled through the box once more.  

Maggie grimaced as Alex began the line of stitches. “Alex, we really shouldn’t talk about this. About...us.”

“You brought it up.”

“I did.” Alex saw how her muscles rippled as she inhaled sharply through her nose. “My mistake.”

Anger flushed Alex’s cheeks, and she fought to keep her concentration. “Of course you’d say that.”

“It was a joke-”

“A joke and a mistake,” Alex snorted, sitting back on her heels for a beat or two. “You should have about that before you dragged me to bed again.”

“Oh, I dragged you into bed, huh? If I remember correctly it was you who basically pushed me into it last- _shit_ -” She hissed and flinched away as the stitches reached a particularly tender section.

Alex lifted her fingertips away for a second, seeing some of the colour draining from Maggie’s face. The injured woman took several long, steadying breaths, and then nodded jerkily for Alex to continue.

She rolled the needle between her forefinger and thumb, and then set back to work. She bit her tongue, listening to Maggie’s laboured breathing hitch and grow ragged with the effort of holding still and letting her stitch.

Finally, however, the dam broke; “I will always want you, Maggie. But I want more than this, or nothing at all.”

Maggie had the edge of the mattress on either side of her hips gripped in her fists, and yet at Alex’s confession, they turned impossibly more white-knuckled. “Alex, please, don't go down this line.”

Alex clenched her jaw, trying not to let her frustrations transfer into her threading. “You think it’s easy getting to hold you each night and then have you push me away each morning?”

Maggie let out a mirthless laugh, expression twisting in pain due to her stomach muscles. “I don't think you should be talking about pushing people away.”

The bickering could have escalated, and she almost craved the fight. This had been the closest they had come to actually discussing the pattern they had fallen into. But one look at Maggie’s pale face and brow prickled with sweat, and she knew it wouldn’t be fair- regardless of what she felt would have been fair to herself. So she held back, finishing the job without comment.

White gauze pressed over the stitches, Alex tore off her gloves and jumped up from the floor. Going back home without any results would be devastating, but it would free her from this chokehold, at least.

“You’re done,” she growled, stalking to the bathroom.

 

 

~

**_Madrid, Spain_ **

Early evening, and the crowds swarmed the square, some alighting on the marble fountain of two lovers embracing. Kara watched them pass, enjoying the dripping cone in her hand. It was rare that she ever travelled globally, but when she did, there were a number of spots where she treated herself, one being the corner store off La Plaza de Amantes, which sold what she would happily swear was the best ice cream to be found on the planet.

She sat on a stone bench, gazing up at a screen that spanned a whole story of a building in the square. It was showing the news, and she beamed as they displayed pictures of Supergirl stopping to greet some tourists in other parts of the capital. She couldn’t speak the language, but the newscasters laughed and smiled as they spoke about the pictures, so Kara assumed it was the reaction to the visit was positive.

A cold splodge smacked down onto her thigh, and she whined as the icecream soaked into her slacks. “Oh, damn.”

As she pawed at her leg with a tissue, Kara thought about how Alex hadn’t gotten in contact yet to wrangle an explanation for her international visit, which meant that whatever she was doing in Matersa, she wasn’t paying attention to the news.

She gave Alex another few minutes, crunched the rest of her cone, and then made the call.

_“Hey-”_

“Where are you?” Kara asked, brushing some of the crumbs off of her trousers.

_“Kara? What’s wrong?”_

“Where are you?” she calmly repeated.

_“Uh, didn’t you get the pic? You know I’m in-”_

“No, where are you really?”

There was a pause, and Kara could practically hear Alex realising she had been caught out. She sounded distant as she began to talk to someone with her, and after a few muffled exchanges, Alex sighed and came back to the phone.

 _“You’re in Spain, aren’t you?”_ she asked, sounding defeated.

“I am. And you’re in Matersa.”

_“I-Are you-Where are you?”_

“Madrid.”

There was more muted conversation, and Kara suspected Alex was pressing her thumb over the microphone. Superhearing or not, she couldn’t quite make out what exactly was being said.

 _“I’m gonna send you through my hotel’s location. Don’t land on the balcony, just...come through to the room,”_ Alex eventually replied. _“You can come get me.”_

“Be there soon,” Kara said, and hung up.

She waited until Alex sent through a pin for Google maps, and then slipped into a back alley. Hiding in the shade, the sound of the crowds further away, she stripped. Then, after another pause, she took to the sky.

 

 

~

**_Matersa, Spain_ **

Alex hung up the phone and slowly lowered it. “Kara’s coming for me.”

“Oh,” she heard behind her. She thought she detected disappointment, but brushed it off as wishful thinking. “Guess you’re going home early then.”

“Guess so.” Alex turned, catching Maggie gingerly rubbing her fingertips over the top of her fresh bandages. “It had to end sometime.”

Maggie’s fingertips stilled, and she turned away. “Yeah.”

“I just wish-”

“Don’t.”

Alex watched the stiff manner in which Maggie pivoted away from her. She wanted to push, to fight, to use this as the match that would burn down their relationship once and for all. She was sick of choking back her emotions, because wasn’t that what Maggie had taught her not to do?

Instead, she knelt back on the floor, telling herself that in these final few moments, the defeat she felt wasn’t Maggie’s fault, or her own. They hadn’t gotten closer to finding Jeremiah, and she was fed up.

Even with the constant banging eurodance from downstairs, everything from the zip of the suitcase to the packing away of shoes was deafening. It took Alex right back to her own apartment; different circumstances with the same undercurrent of dread leading up to a separation. A stolen glimpse of Maggie’s tense figure told her that she felt exactly the same way.

Eventually, Maggie tried to cut through the apprehension, painted with the same defeat and apology that Alex harboured inside. “Look, I’m sorry that we haven’t found your dad. And I’m...” She rubbed her palms together, looking down at her feet. “I’m sorry about…not letting you in.”

“I-” Alex rose, brushing off her knees. Despite the bickering that had come in spates over the last three and a half weeks, it was the olive branch that was the tipping point. She held up a hand. “I can’t do this.”

“But maybe we have to anyway.” Maggie wandered towards the window, peering out to the balcony. “Look, this was a lead that the Science Division gave me permission to follow, and while we’ve been running in circles, I just hope that you won’t see this as a complete waste of your time.”

“No.” Alex grounded herself as Maggie turned to face her again. “I mean, I don’t know if I can do _this_.”

Maggie’s expression hardened. “You’ve been _doing this_ for three and a half weeks-”

There came a knock.

Alex’s reply stung at the tip of her tongue. _She_ hadn’t been the one playing this cat and mouse game for almost a month.

Another knock, impatient.

“Supersister is here,” Maggie muttered, turning away towards the streaky balcony windows again.

Alex let her hand rest on the doorknob for a moment or two before opening.

“Alex, what the hell-Mag- oh.” Her speech stumbled to a stop as her attention rebounded between the occupants of the room, falling once to the single bed, and then skittering away to the floor. “ _Oh_.”

“Let me just finish packing,” Alex said, clipped and uninterested in explaining herself quite yet.

Maggie gave a grunt, fixing her tank top and reaching for her shirt on the bed as Alex knelt down. Carefully, she unzipped the side compartment in her suitcase, second-guessing for a beat before sliding out the velvet ring box. Using her body to block it from view, she put it into the first aid kit, quickly snapping it shut.

Standing, she doubted she had enough courage to hand it over, but she finally held it out to Maggie anyway. The other woman flinched in surprise as if she expected a blow. Alex softened, giving her a wry smile, lifting the green box a few inches higher.

Maggie’s fingers curled slowly around it, as if she was taking a gift that she was afraid was going to be yanked away at any second. She traced a thumb over the white cross, and then said, “I won’t stop looking. I’m here as long as the Science Division thinks this is a lead worth chasing.”

Alex heard the subtext in her voice, and ducked her chin. “That’s all I can ask.”

Maggie glanced at Kara, and then reached out, putting a hand on Alex’s bicep. “Safe home.”

Making sure Kara was still studying the teal paint of the wall, Alex wrapped Maggie in her arms, taking care to avoid the gauze on her stomach. The smaller woman stiffened in surprise, but relaxed as Alex pulled her even closer, snaking her arms around Alex’s waist.

It was intimate, one last embrace before they left the routine for the real world. These nights they shared in foreign lands were to be brushed aside, but Alex knew it would be difficult for her to forget. It was like they were chess pieces that had spent time away from the world of black and white and now couldn’t remember their roles on the board.

“You keep yourself safe, too,” Alex whispered, letting her lips brush over the shell of Maggie’s ear, feeling the shiver that ran through her as a result.

They stepped back, practically retracting themselves from each other. Kara, sensing that their moment was over, turned back around.

“Ready?” she prompted, and at Alex’s nod, turned to Maggie. “I’ll come back for the bags. Won’t be more than a half hour.”

“Good to see you, Kara.”

Knocked off balance by the genuine comment, Kara nodded sharply, gave a half-smile, and then marched out of the hotel room. With one last half-hearted wave, Alex trailed out behind her.

Kara waited until they were in the alleyway at the side of the hotel before she spoke. “Alex-”

“No, I don’t wanna talk about this yet. Just fly us home, please?”

Kara nodded, holding her arms out. Laughing despite the tension, Alex hopped into her sister’s arms, reminded of the times they joked about the Scooby Doo and Shaggy pose. She got butterflies, like always, as Kara launched them into the warm Spanish evening.

“If you happen to drop me,” Alex shouted, the wind rushing past her ears,“Please don’t make it over the Atlantic Ocean. I kinda have a thing about drowning.”

_“Alex!”_

 

 

~

**_National City_ **

Jetlagged, disorientated and longing for the chatter of other languages around her to fill up her empty apartment, Alex sat on her couch, scrolling through headlines about Supergirl visiting Spain.

A key scraped in the lock, and she looked up in alarm as her mother entered.

“Mom?” She straightened. “Hey-”

“Oh, please don’t get up.” Eliza pushed the door shut and shuffled over, taking a deliberate glance at her home screen. “Oh, there’s been a lot of press about the visit, hasn’t there?”

“Mostly just good PR, though,” Alex said.

“Did you read the Op-ed by Calvin Gutherby?”

“The one about how Supergirl shouldn’t be running into international borders if she claims to stand for American values?” Alex shared a sly smile with her mother, and then rolled her eyes, locking her phone screen. “It was Spain. Who is he kidding? You’d think she wandered into a warzone with the stars and stripes as her cape.”

The tension was palpable, and after the past few weeks, Alex had had enough of spending every moment on the edge.

“Mom, just say it,” she said tiredly.

Eliza sucked in a breath. “Sweetie, why did you lie about where you were?”

Alex drew her legs in, resting her elbows over her knees. “I was hunting Cadmus, Mom.”

When no gasp of surprise came, Alex closed her eyes, partly embarrassed and partly irritated that everyone seemed to have been in the know. Kara coming to get her made her feel as if she was a child being chastised for skipping school, and having Eliza stare at her in that quasi-stern way just cemented that feeling. To drive the final nail in the coffin, Alex had nothing to show for her month abroad.

“You could have been hurt, and we wouldn’t have known,” Eliza said, looking down and toying with the empty space where her wedding ring used to be.

They had a strained relationship at the best of times, but seeing that unconscious reminder of Eliza’s own heartbreak and longing, a connection was forged. The need to unlock another part of herself for her mother to see made her shift slightly.

“Actually,” she started carefully. “You would have known.”

Eliza frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t alone.”

The hands stilled, flattening against Eliza’s thighs, bracing themselves. When no comment came, Alex pushed ahead.

“The information about Cadmus, about their connections in Europe, I got it from a tip off here in National City. Then followed it until it led to Matersa.” She bit her lower lip, remembering those initial, tentative days in Maasrichem, the sweaty nights in Alacrucia, the desperation of Matersa. “I got the information through Maggie.”

“Oh.” The first drop in the well, but Alex waited for the echo: _“Oh_.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled.

“Well...” Eliza rubbed her palms up and down her lap, looking down at the floor. Alex watched her working through several questions before settling on a simple; “How is she?”

“Good. She’s…” She scratched the back of her neck. “She’s good.”

Eliza focused on her with that constant, knowing gaze that mothers have, and Alex wondered if _I slept with her_ was scrawled across her cheeks.

“Yeah,” Alex whispered, cutting to the quick before the question even graced the air. “But I can’t- I don’t want to talk about it yet, okay?”

Reaching over, Eliza patted Alex’s knee, smiling softly. “Okay.”

It was progress for them, learning this balance, and for once, Alex didn’t want to fling herself into the bathroom and hide with a bottle of scotch tucked in her fist. She was even more glad when Eliza changed the topic.

“You heard about Kara getting to mentor a new hire at CatCo?”

“I did.” Alex imagined Kara sitting in what used to be Cat Grant’s office, drunk on power with her feet on the desk. She smirked. “It’ll be good for her.”

“And you start your new job tomorrow morning,” Eliza said, tone light. “Are you happy to be back home?”

_I want to be in Matersa with Maggie. It was dangerous with two, it will be worse with one. I need to know she’s safe. I want to be there with her-_

Instead, Alex lied. “No place I’d rather be.”

 

 

~

**_Matersa, Spain_ **

Biting a packet of bandages between her teeth, Maggie slipped up her tank top and looked at the white gauze in the mirror. Her muscles twinged each time she recalled Alex’s steady but cautious fingertips on her skin- with or without gloves.

Maggie sighed, peeling back the edges of the gauze, trying to focus on the task at hand and not let herself get swept up in the loneliness that was her only company since Alex left. She was the one who had initiated it, that first night, and no matter how much she tried to shield herself from heartbreak by keeping it no strings, she was drawn deeper into it each time. It was naive of her, she knew, because she had tangled them in strings the moment she slipped the note through Alex’s door a month ago.

In the stark light of the hotel bathroom, she could see a purple bruise on her collarbone, Alex’s place of choice to mark her. Eyes trained on it, remembering the teeth that left it there, she blindly reached for the first aid kit on the edge of the sink. The box was knocked off balance, clattering to the floor, cascading instruments, band aids and ratting pill packets around it.

Sucking in a deep breath, Maggie bent down, moaning as a blistering pain ripped across her abdomen. By the time she was kneeling on the bathroom floor, sweat had broken across her forehead and prickled down her spine. She inhaled deeply as the tiled floor swam in front of her.

Vision readjusting, she found a crumpled piece of paper underneath her fingers. She lifted it, about to read when something else grabbed her attention, something that had been tucked away, hidden by plastic packets and bandages; in disbelief, she reached out to the navy ring box that Alex had presented to her after Maggie had accepted her proposal almost a year before.

Paper fluttering in her trembling hand, Maggie read the note:

_I didn’t know how to bring this up, but figured you’d find it eventually. Don’t let them get to you, Maggie. It breaks me to even offer you this, but I know if it were for me, you’d do the same._

_Love, forever,_

_Alex._

Maggie knew very well what Alex referred to; in the facility they had infiltrated that afternoon, they managed to find and scan old weapons blueprints. Most of them had been prototypes for weapons that would penetrate the exoskeleton of a range of alien species, but one blueprint horrified both of them.

It was for a device that resembled a worm with a jagged point, no longer or broader than a needle in real size. According to the report, it was capable of burying into a suspect’s brain, seizing upon the electrical impulses and transmitting the neurological to the physical. Strictly speaking, the device could be used with a monitor to read a suspect’s mind.  

Maggie shivered, and sprung open the box. She blinked at the jellied pill no larger than her thumbnail, filled with a mustard-yellow liquid. Delicately, she picked it up, holding it to the light and watching a miniscule air bubble float up and down as she moved it this way and that.

“Kiss of death, Danvers,” Maggie mused, “I’ll send a fruit basket in gratitude.”

She set the pill back inside the ring box and snapped it shut.

 

 

~

**_National City_ **

Her palms itched; wrangling hands clenched in and out of fists the entire ascent in the elevator. Then it groaned to stopped, pinged, and opened.

As the doors shuddered and split, all eyes turned to her.  

Even in her suit, even with years of experience with each of the men and women staring at her, and _even_ with countless missions proving her calibre, Alex was petrified of tripping up as she made her way towards the command centre.  

Every agent tipped their chin and offered a _“Good morning, ma’am,”_ as she passed, and pride welled in her chest. She had prepared a short speech, twisting her fingers and pacing her kitchen this morning, reciting it to her audience of the fridge and the coffeemaker.

But before she could rouse everyone’s attention, all of the monitors shot up a news bulletin. Reflexively, she looked for J’onn, then for Winn, and realised she had neither.

It was up to her now.  

She turned on her heel and saw dozens of eyes looking to her for orders, for answers, for any instructions. She set her jaw.

It was going to be a _hell_ of a first day.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All thoughts are appreciated :)  
> (And I definitely did not completely mentally write season 4 up until the 2018 midseason finale, no way, no sir.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Maggie and Alex meet at puppy training classes...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so disgustingly sweet. Please, don't hold it against me.

**_Week One_ **

Alex valued punctuality. She made an effort to arrive comfortably to events, mostly with time to spare. While her attendance at the puppy obedience class had been last minute, she had managed to scramble through her workload in order to get to the centre a healthy fifteen minutes early. 

She couldn’t stand the awkward small talk that flitted between strangers at these kinds of things, and had reluctantly agreed to fill in for her sister only because she owed her a favour anyway. 

However the puppy in question, an eight week old golden retriever, was making any hope of showing up early an increasingly distant memory. 

“Come on, Gerty,” Alex pleaded. The golden ball of fluff hunched low, wriggling on the backseat. “This isn’t a game, come on.”

As soon as she tried to reach for the pup, it jumped back, believing they were indeed playing some kind of game. With a sigh, Alex crouched down, setting her chin on the seat. 

“Please be good, Gerty,” Alex begged, “I don’t wanna be here anymore than you do.” 

Gertrude stayed still for a second, and then pounced forward, licking over Alex’s nose and cheeks. Alex closed her eyes, unable to fight a smile, and then pushed back. 

“Alright, I get it, I love you too.”  

Alex stood, clipping the leash onto the puppy’s collar. Gerty looked at her, and then the ground, and back at her with uncertainty, anxious about the height. 

“Jump.”

The puppy lay down, blinking innocently.

“You can do it,” Alex encouraged, tugging the leash, “It’s not that far.”

Gerty whined, and eventually Alex gave in, scooping her into the crook of her arm. 

“Kara’s right,” she muttered, “I do spoil you.”

The training classes were scheduled to take place at  _ Kincaid’s A+ Training Centre _ , which Alex might have found more prestigious if it wasn’t located in an otherwise abandoned corner of an industrial lot. Gertrude stopped to sniff at the door, her ears back. 

“Yeah, me too,” Alex mumbled, before shoving through to reception. 

After a brief scuffle over Alex’s identity because of the receptionist’s confusion- in the end, she just gave in and confirmed that she was Kara Danvers- and another over the absence of paperwork for Gertrude- which she was going to kill Kara for not warning her about- they were pointed towards a door. 

Alex wandered down a corridor that had no windows. The air was stagnant, reeking of lemon bleach, and every step on the squeaky linoleum had her making up excuses so that she could leave. She could use a box of chicken nuggets from the Macdonalds across the lot to teach Gertrude some silly trick and then lie to Kara later. 

She stopped at the door, where a crumpled sheet of paper was tacked up, reading  _ Obedience Lessons _ . Gertrude snuffled around the threshold, and then her little tail sparked to life in excitement. 

Alex barely had the door open a few inches before Gertrude bounded in. The leash slipped straight out of her grasp. Too late, she realised that there was another woman and her dog in the room.    

The woman jerked in surprise at the golden bundle leaping around her feet. Her own pup, a timid german shepherd, skittered away, its ears pinned to its head.

“Gertrude, no!” Alex chastised, storming over.

“She’s okay,” the other woman chuckled, kneeling down to ruffle the fur on Gertrude’s back, “Guess that’s why you’re here, right?”

Alex pressed her lips together. “Guess so.” 

Gertrude lapped up the attention as the woman crooned. Alex looked at the clock on the wall. There was still almost ten minutes to go before the class. Could she really do an hour of a patronizing voice telling her how to discipline a dog that wasn’t even hers to begin with…? 

Her gaze fell to the black and tan pup, whose brown eyes flickered from their owner to Alex and back again.  

Softening, Alex crept down, gently clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth. After a moment of hesitation, the shepherd pup ducked its head and made its way over.

“Hello there,” she greeted warmly, letting the puppy sniff her hand. She reached out to stroke its head and it flinched in fear, but Alex murmured until it leaned into her touch.

“Same idea, huh?” the woman asked, gesturing with a free hand to the empty room. 

“Get here early and avoid the awkward small talk? Yeah.”

“Ah.”

Alex bit the inside of her cheek, cursing herself for being so rude to a woman who was only trying to be friendly. “No, honestly, it’s…” She shrugged her shoulders by way of apology. “Gertrude isn’t even my dog, she’s my sister’s.”

“But she’s a cutie.” The woman’s voice lilted up as Gertrude flopped onto her back, getting scratches on her stomach. “Did...you just say Gertrude?”

“Again, blame my sister. She called me after one too many glasses of scotch, asked me what she should call a puppy, and then didn’t pick up the fact that I was being sarcastic with my reply.” Alex smoothed her palms down the shepherd pup’s sleek fur, and finally, it’s tail began to wag. “What’s this girl called?”

“Jinksy.”

Alex scrunched up her nose. “And you tried to give me stick for Gertrude?”

The woman laughed. “She’s a rejected police puppy. Got high scores in training, so the guys said she was gonna be perfect, but she flaked at the actual test. They thought they’d jinxed her and the name just stuck.”

“All bark and no bite, huh?” Alex truly looked over at the woman for the first time, and felt like a fishhook had caught her heart, tugging upwards. “She’s gorgeous,” she breathed. 

“That’s the pups taken care of,” the woman said, lips curling into an easy smile. Alex took in the dimples, the blazing eyes, and knew she was a goner. “Do I get your name, too? Or do I have to ask this little one?” 

The woman tickled Gertrude’s tummy in demonstration, and the pup bicycled her paws in delight.

“I’m Alex,” she managed, focusing on Jinksy. 

“Just Alex?”

“Danvers. Alex Danvers.” Jinksy nuzzled her nose into Alex’s palm. “Police puppy...that means you’re a cop?”

“Yup,” the woman confirmed, “Detective Maggie Sawyer, nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alex returned, smiling. 

Maggie chuckled. “I meant Gertrude, but I guess it’s nice to meet you too, Danvers.”

Eventually, other people joined them with their puppies in tow, but as the room filled, they stayed together. They struck up a natural back and forth, snickering at the back, and when the instructor asked them to pair up for a socialisation activity, there was no contest. 

The hour session that she had dreaded flew by, and Alex found that she was disappointed when it wrapped up. She and Gertrude joined Maggie and Jinksy as they walked out to the parking lot.

Maggie knelt down, scratching Gertrude behind the ears. “Will I see you next week, hmm?” 

“Probably not, my sister will be back.” Alex frowned at the twinkle in Maggie’s eye. “What?”

“I meant Gertrude,” Maggie replied, straightening up with a grin as Alex flushed in embarrassment. She winked, and then tugged Jinksy as she walked away. “See you around, Danvers.”

Alex swallowed, looking down at Gertrude, who quirked her head in question.

“Yeah, me too, Gerty. Me too.”

 

**_Week Two_ **

_ “Alex, I’m so sorry, but Miss Grant wants-” _

“It’s fine, I’ll do it.”

_ “...that was suspiciously easy…” _

Alex couldn’t bring herself to kick up a fuss. She was practically over the moon that Kara couldn’t make the training class for the second time in a row. After spending an entire week thinking about the NCPD detective, she knew that made it a crush. 

If she was being honest with herself, she wasn’t sure who was more excited at the prospect of another class; her or Gertrude. 

Again, they turned up early, this time playing around in the empty room for a few minutes. Alex sat on a low windowsill, watching Gertrude spin in circles until she tumbled down. Then, the door swung open, and Maggie appeared with Jinksy, whose head perked up at the sight of the room’s occupants.

After Maggie unclasped her leash, Jinksy trotted over to Gerty, and the two pups sniffed each other with their tails twitching for a few seconds before Jinksy continued over to Alex. She sprung up, putting her front paws on Alex’s knees and dipping her head for scritches.

“Hey there,” Alex said, running her fingertips under Jinksy’s ears and scratching fondly. 

“You must be Kara,” Maggie said, half-amused and half-perplexed.

Alex chuckled as Maggie sat down next to Gertrude and entertained the energetic blonde bundle. “No, Kara and I aren’t twins. She had to cancel again.”

“Unlucky,” Maggie said, clucking at Gertrude as she batted at her paws, “She’s missing all the fun.”

“Yeah, she is,” Alex said, her cheeks heating as Jinksy laved kisses over her knuckles.

From the outset, the instructor asked them to pair up. When Alex offered, Maggie gave her a brilliant smile. 

“Sure, Danvers. We made a pretty good team last time, right?”

_ Right _ , Alex thought, her heart pounding. 

She spent the better part of the lesson trying to teach Gertrude to sit, but no matter how much prodding, coaxing and finally commanding she did, the pup refused to do it. The only thing that kept Alex’s frustrations at bay was Maggie’s barely stifled laughter each time Gertrude disobeyed the simple request. 

(Jinksy, of course, sat right away.)

By the end of the lesson, Gertrude still hadn’t done what she was told. 

“You aren’t getting any nuggets now, you little jerk,” Alex grumbled, fixing the leash on the puppy’s collar. 

Maggie snorted, letting Jinksy chew on her fingers. “Do you usually bribe her?”

“Not bribe, reward,” Alex stressed, and then glared down at the bubbly pup, still full of beans even after an hour’s session, “But she isn’t getting any today, is she? No.”

Again, Maggie laughed at her, and that sharp hook in Alex’s heart tugged.  “You heading back to work?”

“No, it’s my day off,” Maggie replied. She lightly rattled the leash, sparking life into her pup. “I was gonna take this one to the park.”

“Enjoy,” Alex said, more to Jinksy, whose bottom half was wiggling with the force of her tail wagging. 

Maggie peered at her curiously. “Do you and Gerty wanna join?” 

At the sound of her name, Gerty stamped her paws, looking between Maggie and Alex in excitement. Alex smiled, reaching down to stroke her golden fur. “What do you say? Wanna play some more with Jinksy in the park?”

Gertrude gave a yip in reply, and Alex reached down to tickle her chin; an impulsive thank you for letting her spend even more time with Maggie. 

She followed Maggie’s lead, rounding the industrial lot and walking the five minute journey to the park. Even on a midweek afternoon, they had the park to themselves, and they let their pups off their leashes. Gertrude scrambled around, bolting this way and that. Jinksy was more cautious, pottering around, sniffing and then rolling around in the grass. 

Maggie pointed to a bench, and as they sat down, Alex was very aware that while she was an adult, she felt like a high schooler waiting for their crush to make the first move. They talked about work, about bikes, about their instructor’s crackling microphone, (which was wildly unnecessary, given the size of the class). 

Maggie produced a toy from her pocket, squeaking it to get the pups’ attention and then throwing it out onto the grass for them to chase. At first, Jinksy seemed unsure, but with each time Gertrude brought the toy back to be thrown again, the german shepherd grew in confidence. They raced for it, occasionally jostling, to Alex’s entertainment.

After a while, Jinksy trotted back to them, yawning and dropping her chin onto Maggie’s knee. 

“I think that’s our cue to go,” Maggie announced.

Alex stood and wandered over to Gertrude, who was sprawled on her back in the grass, fast asleep. She shook her head, picking the puppy up and collecting Jinksy’s toy from the ground. She cradled the snoozing puppy for the journey back to the lot, where Gertrude woke up and squirmed to be put on the ground again.

Maggie gave a wave and a smile before she got into her car, and Alex could have sworn there was a hummingbird trapped in the cage of her ribs. 

_ Yep _ , she definitely had a crush. 

She looked down at Gertrude, who was patiently sitting at her feet, watching the car retreat into the distance. 

“Oh,  _ now _ you sit?”

 

**_Week Three_ **

The night before the next lesson, Alex paced Kara’s apartment. Gertrude followed every step, her tiny paws clacking on the hard floor. Kara was wordlessly preparing dinner, and they both knew it was only a matter of time before Alex spilled.

“There’s only so much longer you can keep that up before I hear a yelp,” Kara said, washing a pepper under the tap and bringing it to her chopping board, “And if I do, I’m kicking you out without feeding you.”

Alex stopped, and then stared down at Gertrude, who backed up a few inches and sat, tail swishing in anticipation. “I would never accidentally stand on your paw, would I?” 

Gertrude’s tail accelerated at the address, and Alex reached down to lift her up. The pup licked over her jaw as she meandered over to the couch, her mind still pulsing. She listened to the rhythmic thunks of Kara chopping the pepper, unsure of how to proceed.

“I need to ask you something,” Alex said. 

The cutting paused, and then went on. “Okay?”

“Let me go to the class with Gertrude tomorrow.”

Alex squeezed her eyes shut at the squeal of triumph, which had Gertrude leaping off out of her arms and scrambling towards Kara. “Are you admitting you  _ like _ the class?”

“What? No!”

“So why would you wanna go?” Kara swapped the pepper slices out for a bunch of mushrooms, and went back to work. “Is it quality time with Gerty? Cause you can look after her whenever you want, you know.”

“Remember when I…”  _ Came out. _ It wasn’t very accurate. Alex wrung her hands together. “Remember when I told you I was gay?”

Kara hovered half-way between chops, and then lowered the knife to the wooden board. “You mean, remember last year when you were upset that Robyn was leaving your office and relocating, and when you went to help her pack her apartment, you confessed that you were in love with her, which made her kiss you, which led to you sleeping together on her bare mattress…” 

Alex opened her mouth to protest but Kara breezed on, picking up the knife and waving it as she spoke. “And then when she left, you were depressed and drinking for a solid week until you finally came out to me, then said you were lying, but then retracted that and said you  _ weren’t _ lying and this was real and you were gay?” 

Alex’s jaw worked furiously, suddenly unsympathetic that a teething Gertrude had eaten her way through half of Kara’s shoes that week. “Yes…” 

Kara returned to the dicing, a cheeky glint in her eye. “Then yeah, I remember when you told me.”

Alex heaved a sigh, sinking onto the couch. “There’s a woman in the class.” She played with the face of her watch. “I-I think I kinda like her.”

“What- Oh Alex, that’s amazing,” Kara said. 

“It’s...I mean, you know I’ve dated a little but it’s never been serious. I’ve never felt like-I mean what it was like when I knew Robyn...” Alex clenched her hands in and out of fists. “There’s something about her, Kara, I just…” She struggled to find the right words. 

Kara was the definition of enthusiastic, and Alex was grateful when her sister gave her space to breathe. Ingredients were scraped into a pan, letting out a soft hiss, and Alex got up to join Kara at the island. 

“What she’s like?” Kara asked, giving Alex a sly smile.

“Big brown eyes, sleek black hair, amazing smile,” Alex said dreamily, leaning on the island, “Oh, and her owner Maggie is pretty nice too.”

Kara bumped her hip on the way to the sink. “Jerk.”

Alex shifted from one foot to the other. “She’s pretty amazing. Funny and smart, and a cop, too.”

“A cop, wow,” Kara purred. “Are you gonna ask her out?”

“I don’t even know if she’s gay.” Alex moved to wash her hands as Kara took two bowls down from the cupboard. “I mean, I  _ kinda _ know, but my gaydar isn’t exactly spectacular.”

“Maybe you should just ask,” Kara suggested, holding out a hand towel for her.

Alex snatched it, rolling her eyes. “Kara, you can’t just  _ ask. _ That’s rude and invasive.”

“Not if you’re gay too!” She hurried to switch on the extractor fan as a column of steam grew above the stove. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Alex twisted the towel in her fists. “I could humiliate myself.”

“Okay. So you do.” Kara shrugged a shoulder, stirring the contents of the pan. “Then I start going to the classes and you never have to see her again.”

Looking down at where the damp cloth was tangled around her hands, Alex couldn’t help the sharp drop of disappointment in her stomach. 

“But,” Kara bridged, “You’ll never know if you don’t try.” 

“She might not be single.”

“You’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

Alex took a seat at the island, watching Kara fill the two bowls and click off the stove. “She could be single but straight.”

“You won’t know-” Kara singsonged, bringing the bowls to the island, “-unless you ask.”

Alex reached for her bowl, but Kara held it away from her. She rolled her eyes. “Yes, fine, I’ll ask. Now gimme my damn dinner.” 

 

**_Week Four_ **

She hadn’t gotten the courage to ask Maggie if she was single, or if she was even gay, let alone ask her out. But there had been one small result: she had gotten the woman’s phone number. 

It had been a misunderstanding, really. During their pre-session puppy playdate, as Maggie referred to it, Alex had mentioned that there had been a break in at the research facility where she worked. A dozen high end laptops were stolen, as well as other digital equipment. Thankfully, all of their data was backed up on cloud servers, so they didn’t lose any work, but it was still disheartening. 

Maggie insisted that they exchange numbers. “I’m not robbery, but if you ever need anything, give me a call.”

(Alex almost dropped her phone in a haste to hand it over.)

And so Alex spent the week staring at Maggie’s contact details. More than once, she itched to send something, to start something. A casual hello, a picture of Gertrude being silly, a fabricated inquiry about Maggie’s Triumph. In the end, the fear of it being exploitative, of overstepping or being inappropriate stopped her. 

So instead, she waited a whole week. She ignored the expectant look she got from Kara when she went to pick Gertrude up the afternoon of the fourth session, giving a yapping Gertrude her full attention.   

Driving along the usual route to the lot, Alex could see the dark clouds forming. Gertrude puttered about the back seat, whining as thunder rumbled in the distance. 

“Me too, girl,” Alex agreed, glancing at the clock on the dash. There was just enough time to go home and grab a towel. She knew that rain would be coming down in sheets soon enough, and wet dog was the last thing she wanted to deal with today.

She dashed into her apartment, but paused at the closet. She wondered if Maggie would also have the foresight to prepare for the weather, or if she would have gone straight from the precinct after a shift, picked up Jinksy and headed to the lot. After a second of deliberation, she took a second towel.

By the time they reached  _ Kincaid’s _ , the rain was bucketing down. She wasn’t as early as she usually was, but Maggie was holding their usual spot at the back when they arrived. Jinksy was shivering, huddled against Maggie’s legs, rain still dripping from her fur. 

“Danvers,” Maggie greeted. Her hair was matted to her cheeks, shirt soaked in patches around her shoulders and sides. “Great weather, right?”

“Well, I can’t say I’m a fan,” Alex said, and held out the second towel to Maggie, “Thought Jinksy might appreciate this.”

Maggie guffawed, taking it and bending down to wrap up the trembling pup. “Thanks. This little one hates the rain.”

Alex had a harder time of keeping Gertrude still long enough to dry her. “Are you talking about Jinksy or yourself?”

Maggie paused mid-rub. “Okay, you get away with that because of your act of kindness only.”

(Even with rain dripping from the ends of her tangled hair and clothing weather-beaten from the storm outside, Alex thought that Maggie was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.)

The room soon filled with the stench of wet dog, and they spent most of the session laughing at puppies who were unfortunate enough to slip around on the wet floor. 

Then, Maggie herself took a tumble, her boots sliding on a small puddle. Instinctively, Alex shot forward, grabbing the woman around the waist to steady her, and unintentionally knocking their torsos together. 

“You okay?”

“Yeah, thanks…” Maggie looked down at where they pressed against each other, not an inch of space between them, and then trailed back up, looking at Alex through her eyelashes. 

With a swallow, Alex dropped her arms and stepped back, hoping that it didn’t appear as painfully awkward as it felt. She glanced around at the rest of the group, glad that no one seemed to have noticed the two women. She felt Maggie’s gaze burning into her profile. 

Luckily, Jinksy flopped down with a huff, fed up of battling the soaked floor, and broke them out of their moment.

At the end, they made small talk about how Jinksy’s ears were beginning to pop up, and it was only a matter of time before they were fully perked. Maggie laughed at the story of Gerty’s new found obsession with chewing shoelaces, and the sound had Alex’s stomach tightening.  

They lingered at the entrance to  _ Kincaid’s _ , Alex desperately trying to find the courage to ask Maggie out. Eventually, she made a comment about getting home from the storm, bid Maggie and Jinksy goodbye, and ducked through the rain to her car with a whining, wet golden retriever in her arms. 

After dropping Gertrude back at Kara’s and heading home for a hot shower, Alex looked at the rain streaming down her window and waited for her delivery. She pitied the poor soul having to brave the weather just to deliver other people’s dinner. 

Her phone chirped beside her, and she gave it an uninterested glance, thinking it would be an update on her food’s arrival. When she saw Maggie’s name, she scrambled to open it.

It was a picture of Jinksy on a bathroom floor, drowning in a huge, cream towel. The pup looked damp and miserable, her ears pinned back. Following it was a caption:  _ Second bath of the day- still hates it _ .

Alex didn’t even care that she was still grinning like an idiot when she paid for her pizza a few minutes later. 

 

**_Week Five_ **

While none of the data was lost in the robbery, pressure came down from on high to finish up the project that they had been working on. Alex doubled down, working extended shifts to clear up the loose ends. It meant that Kara finally got a chance to take Gerty to class that week. 

Eyes blurry from staring at a report too long, Alex sat back and checked her phone. She almost fell out of her chair at the sight of a text from Maggie. Glancing at the clock on the wall, Alex could see that the session was about to begin at  _ Kincaid’s _ .

**Maggie:** _ Your sister is literally just another puppy _

_ Yup, _ she texted,  _ That’s Kara. _

A few moments later, she received a reply. 

**Maggie:** _ Jinksy is pretty upset that you bailed on her this week. _

Alex bit her lower lip.  _ Yeah? Tell her I’ll make it up to her. _

_ You better _ , came the response. Alex was about to put her phone away again when she received another.  _ Check your sister’s instagram story. _

She did, and found a boomerang of Maggie haunched down in front of Gerty and Jinksy. Both of her palms were held out, each of the pups offering a paw to her. It went back and forth, yet Maggie’s bright smile was constant.

_ Neat trick,  _ Alex sent. Her thumbs hovered, nerves gripping her stomach, and then,  _ You’ll have to catch me up before next week. _

She watched the grey dots bounce as Maggie typed, her heart stuttering underneath her breast bone.  _ You want me to teach you how to use your paws? Sure.  _

Putting her phone down, Alex let out a long breath, spinning slowly and wondering if she was about to float straight up out of the chair. She didn’t want to read too far into the innuendo, because at the end of the day, she still didn’t have the concrete confirmation of Maggie’s sexuality. Still, the joke gave her enough motivation to get through the rest of her work that afternoon. 

Later, as she trudged home, she found Kara sitting against her apartment door. Her legs were stretched out, and Gertrude was curled asleep on her thighs. The pup’s little paws twitched in her sleep, and occasionally she let out a huff, barking at invisible menaces.

Alex raised an eyebrow at Kara, unsure if she really wanted to wake the puppy. “What are you doing here?”

Kara smiled up at her. “I thought you’d want to hear all my thoughts on Maggie.”

Rifling in her pocket, Alex avoided Kara’s smug expression. At the jingle of keys, Gertrude’s head popped up, sleep forgotten instantly. 

Alex let Kara in first, the puppy pattering happily behind. Gertrude explored the apartment curiously, like each time she entered the space, she wanted to root out the differences. 

Alex had barely got the door shut behind her before Kara ripped off the band aid. “Maggie’s gay.” 

“Oh my-” Alex smacked her palm against her forehead. “I don’t even want to know what semi-offensive, tone deaf way you found that out.” 

“I didn’t even ask!” Kara protested, moving to the fridge, “She made a joke about an ex girlfriend.” 

The hummingbird in Alex’s chest woke up, its wings fluttering. “Did you, um…” She swallowed, crouching down and whistling Gertrude over to her. Only when her trembling hands were buried in warm fur did she continue. “Did you tell her I was gay?” 

“I didn’t  _ tell _ her, exactly. I just...implied it.” 

“You implied it?”

“I told her it had been a while since you did anything outside of work. And that it had been a few months since your last date.” She held her hands up at Alex’s glare. “I did add that it was women that you dated!”

“So, she thinks I’m sad and lonely?”

“But at least she knows you’re gay and single!” 

“Gay, lonely, single and sad,” Alex murmured, focusing on shimmering brown eyes looking up at her. She rubbed at velvety soft ears. “Sounds about right, huh, Gerty?”

She took her phone out of her pocket and snapped a picture of Gerty’s lolling tongue, sending it to Maggie with the caption:  _ Looks like someone missed me today. _

As she ate dinner with Kara, she got the response. It was a selfie, with Jinksy snuggled against Maggie’s cheek. 

**Maggie:** _ Gerty isn’t the only one who missed you today, Danvers. _

Kara had to give her a thump on the back as she choked. 

 

**_Week Six_ **

**Maggie:** _ Hey, you in? _

The mug hovered in mid-air, tilted to her mouth as she read the text from Maggie. When hot coffee dribbled over her chin, Alex jumped back, putting both the mug and the phone down onto the kitchen counter. 

_ Yeah, why?  _ she eventually managed.

After the onslaught of the last week and a half, Alex finally had the day off. She still had a little under two hours until she had to pick up Gertrude for class. 

There was a knock on her door. Wiping her wet chin, she scooted to her mirror, making sure the coffee was gone and she was presentable, before going to the door. She swung it open, blinking in surprise at who she found. 

“Hey, Danvers.”

“Maggie,” Alex answered, bewildered. 

The woman’s lips twitched. “Can I ask a favour?”

“What-?” Alex smoothed her palms on either side of her hips. “Yeah. Yes. Wait, how did you know where I lived?”

“I’m a detective, Danvers, I detect,” Maggie said, shrugging as if that should answer it, “Listen, I just got off shift but I got a call to come back. I’ve picked up a triple homicide, and I think it’s gonna be a round the clock job. Are you okay to take Jinksy for a night or two?”

All of a sudden, Alex noticed the black and tan pup, sitting quietly at Maggie’s feet. When Jinksy saw that she had Alex’s attention, her eyes lit up, and she shifting from paw to paw, looking between the two women.  

“You...aren’t going to class?” Alex guessed.

“Afraid not.” Maggie reached down and tickled behind Jinksy’s ear. One had popped straight up, and the other still flopped. “Is this okay?”

Alex saw the openness in Maggie’s face, and wondered if she was used to being dependent on others, on calling in last minute favours. She nodded, reaching out for Jinksy’s leash. “Sure, she can stay as long as she wants.”  

“Thanks,” Maggie breathed, handing over the leash. She bent down, and Jinksy hopped up, putting her front paws on Maggie’s knees. “You be a good girl for Alex, okay?” 

She gave the pup a noisy kiss on the head, and then stood pointing at Alex. “I owe you one, okay?”

A wink and a smirk was her goodbye, and Alex felt like she had peddled uphill. Her chest was tight, breathing stunted, face red.

Jinksy was cautious of the unfamiliar space, sniffing here and there. She followed Alex for a while as she wandered around on the phone to Kara, and while they waited for dinner to cook in the oven, Alex sat on the floor and Jinksy lay on her back. 

“You have a pretty owner, Jinksy,” Alex said, rubbing her thumbs over the leathery pads of her small paws, “I wanna ask her out. But I don’t know how?”

They went out for a walk, and then Alex fed her a small bowl of the food that she kept in the cupboard for when Gerty stayed over. After that, Jinksy didn’t settle down. She whined softly, her ears back, tail low between her legs. She lingered at the door, distressed at the lack of Maggie’s presence.

Alex clicked her tongue, and the pup perked up. She trotted over towards the couch, putting her chin on it and waving her tail. 

“Oh, baby, I miss her too,” Alex sighed, toying with the one ear that hadn’t risen yet.

Alex lifted the pup onto the couch and set her on her lap. Jinksy quirked her head, but then seemed to shuffle down and finally settle. When the cartilage was strong enough for both of the shepherd’s ears to stand, she would be beautiful dog, Alex thought. But for now, one up and one down was adorable.

Alex went back to watching TV, her hand gently rubbing over the fur of Jinksy’s neck. In a matter of minutes, the pup was asleep. 

Gingerly, Alex reached for her phone. Maggie had texted a question about an update, and she sent back a picture of a sleeping Jinksy. 

_ Fast asleep, but missing you.  _

In their conversations thus far, Maggie had kept her emoji use scant, but in reply to her sleeping pup, she sent three heart eyes.    

The next afternoon, she got a text to come by the precinct and drop Jinksy off. Maggie was waiting for her on the front steps of the station, leaning casually against the railing. As soon as she caught sight of Maggie, Jinksy tugged forward on the leash, paws scrabbling against the sidewalk.  

“Hey, you two,” Maggie greeted, and then hunkered down as Jinksy leapt towards her, “Hey you, hey you!”

Jinksy licked all over her owner’s cheeks, and while Maggie looked pale and weary from working through the night, she cuddled the dog closer. “No accidents?” 

“Nope. She was a good girl.” 

Maggie took the leash from Alex, and ruffled her fingers against Jinksy’s back. “Were you? Were you a good girl for Alex?” 

Alex smiled, shaking her head. When she was in college, she had seen the aftermath of a hazing prank pulled on a freshmen. When he passed out at a party, his friends had wrapped him from the neck down in swaths and swaths of sticky tape. He woke up, paralysed and unable to move in the bindings until he was cut free. 

She was bound, now, by her attraction to Maggie. But she didn’t know how she was going to cut herself out. By facing her fear of rejection and asking Maggie out, finally? She could no longer hide behind the excuse that Maggie wasn’t gay or single. 

Maggie straightened, wiping off the dust from her knees. “You know, that picture you sent last night was pretty gorgeous. A girl could get an idea or two.”

Alex frowned. “About Jinksy?” 

“That, and the rest of it.” 

Maggie walked away, Jinksy trotting at her heels, leaving Alex like a statue outside of the station. Slowly, she started back in the direction of her car, opening up the picture she had sent the night before. 

In a more concentrated state, Alex balked at the blunder. She had left her stomach uncropped from the picture, flashing the bottom of her abs where her shirt had ridden up. Those three heart eyes were still the reply, and yet felt like an entirely new message. 

Getting back to her car, Alex rested her forehead on the steering wheel, wondering when she would get the courage to cut herself free.     

 

**_Week Seven_ **

After a two week absence, Alex looked forward to the training session. In Kara’s kitchen, Alex marvelled at how big Gerty had grown since that very first week, while her sister brought her up to speed in a typical animated fashion. She bopped the pup’s black nose, causing her to spring back, tail whipping back and forth.

“Ready to go play with Maggie and Jinksy?” Alex asked.

The tail went impossibly faster at the names, becoming a blonde blur. Kara bustled them towards the door, muttering, “I don’t think she’s the only one.”

When they reached the training room, Maggie was seated on the low windowsill, talking softly to Jinksy, whose ears had now both fully sprang up. Alex opened the door, and Jinksy jerked around, bolting for Gerty. The two puppies ran around, circling in excitement.

“Ah, we have the original Danvers this week,” Maggie said, standing and producing a tennis ball from her jacket pocket, “Wanna play?”

For the next few minutes, Maggie and Alex tossed the ball between them, laughing at their pups attempts to intercept. They bounded after the ball each time one of their humans dropped it or deliberately bounced it off the wall. 

Throughout the session itself, Alex also felt like one of the puppies, full of anxious energy. In the last week, neither of them had breached the topic of the picture, nor Maggie’s comments outside the precinct. In fact, Maggie seemed not to be bothered by it at all, joking and bantering as usual. 

At the end, Maggie and Jinksy walked Alex and Gerty to the car. Alex opened the door to let Gerty hop into the backseat, but before she even approached a goodbye, Maggie slipped two dog treats from her pocket and pressed one into each of Alex’s hands. 

“Try and get them both to give you their paw at the same time,” she said.

Unable to refuse Maggie, Alex knelt down, the two pups jiggling and snuffling at her closed fists. She asked them to sit, and they did, and then requested their paw. Jinksy did it straight away, but Gerty just quirked her head and barked impatiently. Finally, they both rested their paw on the back of Alex’s fists, and she gave them their treats. 

“All dogs are good dogs,” Alex said, staring down at the pups as they crunched the last of the biscuits, “But Jinksy totally has has Gerty beat on the tricks front.”

Maggie chuckled. “Gerty’s trying her best.”

Locking eyes with the detective, the desire to throw herself over that final ledge rose up. It would have been so easy to ask; coffee, lunch, dinner? To say,  _ my sister told me you were gay, and I’m gay, interested? _ To even suggest they spend a little more time together at the dog park. But Gerty hopped into the backseat, signalling the end, and Alex left with still no progress. 

She returned to Kara’s apartment with a weight on her shoulders, which only got heavier as Kara forwent a hello in favour of asking, “Have you asked her out yet?”

Gritting her teeth, Alex handed over Gertrude’s leash. “No…”

“Alex!” Kara whined, causing Gertrude to bark. She scuffled at the hair on top of the retriever’s head. “Exactly, girl!” 

Kara stood back to let them in. She gave her sister a prod on the cheek, a silent scolding for the brooding. 

Alex stalked forward. “She probably just thinks of me as a new friend.” 

“No way.” Kara closed the door, and leaned back against it, crossing her arms over her chest.  “She was fishing me for information about you.”

“You’ve only met her once,” Alex argued, distracted by her text tone. 

**Maggie:** _Hey, I think I accidentally left Jinksy’s toy in the backseat of your car?_

“Was that Maggie?” Kara asked. 

“Yes…” 

Kara hummed, practically skipping her way over to the fridge. Alex rolled her eyes, texting,  _ Uh oh.  _

**Maggie:** _ Jinksy is pretty upset about it.  _

The text was accompanied by a picture of Jinksy curled on the couch, her head resting on her front paws, brown eyes looking up through her eyelashes pleadingly. 

Alex gnawed at the inside of her cheek, glancing at her watch.  _ I’m still at Kara’s. Want me to bring it round?  _

**Maggie:** _ If you could... _

Then came Maggie’s address. 

(Alex made an excuse for a swift exit, saying she had an important errand to run, which wasn’t exactly a lie.)

When she reached Maggie’s apartment she expected it to be a brief, if friendly handover. She didn’t expect to be invited in. Catching sight of her at the door, Jinksy cleared the arm of the couch in a single leap and skittered over to her. 

Alex bent down, handing over the squeaky grey duck that had been left in the backseat. Jinksy sniffed and then turned away in disinterest. She put the toy down in confusion and rose up, looking over at Maggie who was stirring something on the stove. 

“Jinksy doesn’t seem too upset,” she said, slinking over. She stood behind Maggie, watching the muscles of her back underneath her Tshirt as she banged the wooden spoon on the side of the pot and set it down. 

“No, she doesn’t.”

Maggie turned then, a lazy grin plastered on her face, and Alex had the acute experience of a mouse confronting a cat. She swallowed, glancing towards the door and wondering if she should go, desperate hope keeping her pinned to the spot.   

“Why not just wait until next class?” she asked, voice hoarse.

“Well, to be honest, Danvers,” Maggie said, swaggering closer, trapping Alex against her kitchen island, “The toy wasn’t the only reason that I asked you up here.” 

Before she could ask, Maggie stepped close enough that Alex could count the freckles scattered around her nose. The hummingbird in Alex’s chest practically had a stroke as she trailed her eyes down, spotting the freckles around Maggie’s mouth, too. And then- 

Soft lips against hers, gently pressing. Hands, strong and warm met her hips. Her mind fizzled away, her own body acting instinctively, cupping Maggie’s jaw. Heat thrummed up and down her body as they pushed closer, kissed deeper- 

They broke apart at a bark, Jinksy clawing at their ankles. They chuckled down at her, sitting at their feet, confused at her humans. She jumped up, resting her paws on their thighs, happy to receive the scratches she got. 

Alex kept a hand on Maggie’s face, thumb tracing the indent of her dimple. “God, I’ve been trying so hard to ask you out.”

Maggie grinned wider. “I know. I had to plant a damn dog toy in your car to get you back here.”

“I was scared you weren’t interested.”

“Interested, Danvers? Are you kidding?”

Giddiness bubbled in Alex’s throat, and she carefully threaded both hands through Maggie’s hair. “I wasn’t, uh, barking up the wrong tree?”

Maggie giggled at her, leaning up for another kiss, but a jealous paw scraped incessantly at her knee. Laughing along, Alex hoisted Jinksy up, and the pup gave them both their fair share of kisses. 

“Jinksy may have attended those training classes, but it was me who taught her the most crucial thing in life,” Maggie said. 

Jinksy nuzzled into Alex’s ear, puffing against her hair, but she only had eyes for Maggie. “And what’s that?”

“That life is too short,” Maggie explained, “That we should kiss the girls that we wanna kiss.”

Alex looked at Jinksy then. “What do you say to that?”

The pup’s tail began to beat against her hip, and Alex thought that Maggie’s lesson might have been her most crucial one for her, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemme know what you think of the pups


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about a decade into the future. There's a happy ending, I swear.

**_“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” - Genesis 11:7, NKJV_ **

~

It isn’t clear when it got bad. 

Every avalanche begins with a single snowflake. Then suddenly the entire slab is buckling under the pressure. 

Sitting in her car, waiting for Jamie to leave school, Alex toys with her wedding ring and realises she can’t pinpoint the  _ exact _ argument that gave her the warning sign. It began with both of them working longer hours, one or both of them missing school events, and then dealing with Babel.

Cadmus had been taken down years ago, and Babel emerged as its radical, unpredictable little brother. They hadn’t been content to just go after aliens; they went after those who endorsed a pro-alien stance. Maggie had been appointed head of the taskforce to combat their threat and it had almost cost her life in an assassination attempt.  

Somewhere along the line, they had picked up friction. Long buried insecurities had risen up over time, devils whispering in their ears. Initially, it just affected them at home, but eventually it spilled over into their professional lives, derailing everything. 

Suddenly, they weren’t just on edge with each other, but their friends and family were too. Kara once admitted that it was like staring at a bomb, not sure whether to try and cut the wires or wait for the blast.   

The final straw was when Jamie had gotten upset in the middle of a bitter exchange. It became easier to avoid fighting by not talking to each other at all outside of conversations driven by their daughter. Once Jamie went to bed, the false happiness reverted back to the deafening silence. She had asked herself more than once why she and Maggie were even sharing a bed anymore. 

The passenger door opens and Jamie hops in. Alex goes through the motions, plastering a big smile on her face. 

“Hey, how was your day at school?”

“I got full marks on my spelling test!” Jamie chirps. 

Alex feels pride swell up, the first positive,  _ good _ thing she’s felt all day. She lets Jamie’s excited babble carry her thoughts away from the dread in her stomach as they head home. 

~

They’re fighting, again. And it’s bad. 

Like always, it begins with a misunderstanding, and spirals until they’re furiously arguing over something entirely different. No matter how long it lasts, they never find their middle ground, their no man’s land. 

Sometimes, Alex isn’t even sure they’re speaking the same language anymore. 

When they’re walking on eggshells around each other, Alex thinks that dead air is the worst; afraid to breathe, even. But when they’re facing off in their kitchen like this, the stove lights capturing the twist of shadow and fury on her wife’s face, she thinks that  _ this _ must surely be the worst of it. 

Then, she hears a sharp intake of breath, and she spins to see Jamie’s terrified eyes peering out of the dark hallway, and that cuts her. Once again, they have scared their daughter with their raised voices. 

Maggie narrows her eyes one last time, as if silently telling Alex whose fault it is that Jamie has woken up, and then storms over to tuck their girl back into bed. 

Alex stands, static in the kitchen. She looks around and she is-

She blinks. She’s done. She really can’t go another round.

Automatically, she moves towards the door. She lifts her jacket from the stand, and puts on her shoes. She hears the creak of Jamie’s door closing, footsteps approaching, but all she concentrates on is tying her laces through the tremors of her hands.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to Kara’s.”

“It’s after 9.”

Alex doesn’t answer, straightening up and palming her keys from the bowl by the front door.

“Is this-?” Maggie’s hands slid away from her hips, hanging at her side as the gravity of the situation hits her. “Are you-?”

“Maggie-”

“Are you walking out on us?”

Alex doesn’t answer. She isn’t sure she can. Honestly, she hasn’t known what to say to Maggie for almost a year now, so this time she gives up on trying.

The severity of Maggie’s question doesn’t register until she makes it to Kara’s apartment, and how that happens is a blur. She knocks, and Kara answers, and she must see it in Alex’s face because her eyes widen. 

“I think-” 

Alex struggles to get the truth out, and Kara pulls her into a hug before she does. She chokes the words into her sister’s shoulder. 

“I think it’s over.”

~

Alex cries in Kara’s arms, pouring out a year’s worth of tears. 

She wakes up, curled on the sofa with a blanket, a bottle of water and a misaligned spine. With a groan, she pulls herself up, seeing dawn breaking. Kara perches on the coffee table, face a bloody red from the early sun, showing the lines of concern and exhaustion. 

“I called Maggie last night,” she says quietly, “I told her you were gonna stay here for a while.”

“I just walked out on her and Jamie,” Alex croaks, sinking back onto the couch, “Why did I do that?”

Kara fidgets with a chipped edge of the table. An hyper Jamie had gotten a little too competitive on game night. “When you say walked out…?”

“I didn’t have an answer for her, either.” Her stomach churns, remembering the shock slackening Maggie’s features. “I’m so tired, Kara.”

Kara rises, brushing a kiss to her forehead. “You can rest now, Alex.”

She doesn’t sleep for a while. She watches the colours changing across the ceiling as the sun rises. Haunching the blanket further around her shoulders, she thinks about her wedding day almost a decade before, tries to preserve it, and leave it untainted by the present.

When she wakes again, Eliza is there, gently sifting through her hair. “Darling.”

“Mom.” Alex sits up, lip trembling, the situation crashing down on her. While their relationship had improved over the years, the addition of Jamie pulling mother and daughter closer than they had ever been, Alex still fears the disappointment in Eliza’s eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“I love you,” Eliza says calmly, stroking Alex’s cheeks with her thumbs, “I’m proud of you.” 

That, above anything, is what breaks Alex. She sinks forward into her mother’s arms, pressing her face into the crook of her neck and sobbing. 

The three of them share a quiet breakfast, filled with the scrapes of cutlery on plates and slow gulps of coffee. Alex doesn’t have much of an appetite, but Kara had made the effort to get all of her favourite pastries, so she eats. 

“You have a choice, Alex,” Eliza says, in that patient tone, “You can end this, or you can try and fix this. But you need to think about what’s best for you, Jamie and Maggie.” 

“I just feel like we talk at each other,” Alex admits, “I don’t know how we’re gonna fix it if we’re speaking in entirely different conversations all the time.”

Kara shares a look with Eliza, and then sets down her cruller. “What if you two went away for a few days? I could take Jamie.”

Eliza nods at Kara, the suggestion taking root with her as well. “That could be a good idea, sweetie. Just go and talk. Try and work this out.”

Alex looks at her wedding ring, glinting in the sun as she fiddles with the handle of her mug. “Where would we even go?”

Kara glances again at Eliza, and then smiles tightly. 

“Home.”

~

They roam around like strangers in Alex’s childhood home. 

It had been surprisingly easy to convince Maggie to pack a bag and come with her. Jamie was at school, begged off with a lie that the reason Alex wasn’t at breakfast was because Supergirl needed her early. 

The journey down had been filled with constantly changing radio stations and a thousand words unspoken. Alex let Maggie choose the music as a concession for not letting her drive, but it resulted in a white-knuckled grip to stop herself from snapping at the refusal to leave the console alone. 

The only time they spoke was when they stopped at a roadside diner three quarters of the way to Midvale. Alex wrestled with a streaky ketchup bottle when Maggie broke the silence.   

“Why are we doing this?”

She sounded tired, but there was still some bite. Alex could hear in her tone that she had been wanting to force the question out since they left National City. 

“Because we have to do something to make this work,” Alex replied.

“And if it doesn’t?”

Alex hovered the ketchup bottle over her fries, and met Maggie’s eye. Her wife’s jaw tightened, and it was then that they both realised that their lifetime of firsts could include one that they never allowed themselves to anticipate. 

Now, they wander like ghosts, the space too big for the two of them. Alex knows that it’s preposterous, but she thinks if she closes her eyes, she can hear the crash of the shore in the distance. Then, she picks up the creak of Maggie’s footsteps upstairs. She wonders if her wife is also looking at the slants of bright sunlight on the floor, thinking that it’s fitting that they’re shying away in the shade. 

Alex looks out the window at the deck, remembering the row that she and Maggie had had the last time that they were here. Eliza had dealt with them. She had expected her mother to raise her voice at her, but had been surprised when Maggie was also harshly spoken to.

She meanders through the living room, playing with her wedding ring, memories coating the room like splashed paint. She hadn’t learned to read on that particular couch, sitting between her mother and father, but it was in the same spot. Later, she had fumbled with boyfriends on it, and later still, let her fiancée kiss and make love to her on it while her mother went to a conference and left them in charge of the house. 

She hears the laughter of her and Kara as she chased her out to the deck, water gun in hand. It was a late spring day after a winter spent mourning her father. To her dismay, she wonders what it was like for a young Kara to enjoy a day with a friend just to have Alex shut her out again when it was over.

She turns to the mantel, where her wedding photograph used to sit centre-stage. Now, it’s a photograph of her, Eliza, Maggie and Kara, with a very young Jamie laying over their laps. Her mother, sister and daughter smile for the camera, but she and Maggie only have eyes for each other. 

Her heart lurches as she makes her way to the kitchen, wondering how it had all gone wrong. She is still in love with Maggie, or at least, the woman she knows is there underneath the layers of grit and bitterness that has formed between them. 

Footsteps descend the stairs, and then stop about halfway down. Alex holds her breath. Then they continue down and she exhales. Soon, Maggie finds her in the kitchen, and they stare across the expanse. 

“Are we gonna walk around in silence for a few days, or are we gonna talk?” Maggie crosses her arms tight across her chest, and leans against the stove. “Because otherwise, we should have just stayed at home.”

Alex doesn’t know where to begin, but she dives in somewhere, and they fall into a now familiar routine. They fling accusations and get defensive at retaliations. Back and forth the blame swings, fluctuating between their home and their work. 

No topic is left untouched. Especially not the 18 months they spent working to combat the work of Babel. The losses, the toll it took on them, on Kara, on Jamie who was so young at the time and could not understand all the distress of those around her.  

Alex listens to Maggie’s ranting, feeling like her wife is tearing the very flesh off of her bones. Vividly remembering the night where Maggie’s team had went through with an operation they knew was based on bad intel, she cries, “Did you think about Jamie? About me?” 

“God, you’re right. I should have asked him nicely to spare me because I had a kid at home,” Maggie snaps.

Alex points straight at her chest, raw and shaking, “You  _ always _ do this. You hide behind sarcasm.” 

“Because the alternative is terrifying, Alex.” Maggie’s fists clench at her hips, taking a dangerous few steps forward. “Do you know what it was like? Lying there, bleeding out, thinking about you and our little girl at home?” 

“Jamie could have lost her mother.”

“I would have lost you both.” 

The comment slaps Alex. Maggie Sawyer has always been fearless, and in her narrow way, Alex has believed that she had bravely faced death at the hands of the Babel agents. Maybe she has been short-sighted, she considers, but it’s a flicker in the back of her mind.

Instead of softening, she threatens forward a few more steps, but Maggie stands her ground, proving the point.   

“ _ I _ could have lost  _ you _ ,” Alex grits, digging out that long-buried fear.

Maggie scoffs, looking down at how her fingertips twist her engagement ring. Alex watches too, noticing how they shake. They’re close, now. 

(Closer than they have been in a long time.) 

Alex can hear the hitch in Maggie’s throat, fight humming between them as she growls, “Do you even  _ want _ me anymore?”

From the twitch of her mouth, Alex knows that Maggie didn’t meant that to be as much of a dare as it sounded, but she’s too proud to take it back, so she just raises her chin and lets her gaze fall from Alex’s eyes to her lips.

And that, more than anything, is what scatters their bricks and knocks them down to their foundations.    

~

Afterwards, they’re lying on the kitchen floor, sucking in great heaving breaths. The last of the tension is still shuddering through Alex’s body. Her pants are around her ankles, and Maggie is bare from the waist up, her jeans open and belt thrown somewhere towards the kitchen table. They look at each other, shoulder to shoulder, and do something they haven’t in a long time. 

They laugh. 

Deep, genuine laughter rolls out of both of them. 

Alex puts a hand to her forehead. “God, we needed that.” 

“We did.”

Maggie turns on her side, and Alex kicks off her pants, freeing herself to do the same. Gently, Maggie runs her thumb over Alex’s lower lip, which is a little swollen after zealous teeth had nipped at it. “Did I hurt you?”

Posed so softly, it’s easy for Alex to want to answer  _ No _ , but the truth is Maggie had hurt her. Not in the kitchen, but over the last spate of months at war with each other. Wasn’t that the reason they were in Midvale, because they had been hurting each other? 

Alex reaches out, tenderly brushing hair behind Maggie’s ear. “This doesn’t fix everything.”

“No,” Maggie agrees, “But it’s a start, right?”

It is. Alex leans in, pressing her lips to Maggie’s, lovingly this time; not wanting to take, but to give. She rests their foreheads together. “I’m still in love with you. So, so in love. And I’m sorry I haven’t...shown you recently.”

“I’ve missed you,” Maggie murmurs, a hand wrapping around Alex’s waist and slotting them together, “It’s been hard, spending every day together and yet not feeling like we’re  _ together _ . It’s felt…”

“Lonely?”

Maggie sighs. “Yeah.” 

“I’m here,” Alex reassures, desperate to preserve this moment, “I’m right here with you, Maggie.”

Maggie carefully rolls Alex onto her back, and right there on the kitchen floor, they come together again. But this time they’re gentler; their gasping like apologies, their pleasure like forgiveness. 

~

They reconnect, both physically and emotionally. Sometimes, they revert to fighting. Sometimes Alex has to go sit by the ocean, or Maggie goes for a walk in the forest to clear her head, but it’s progress forward, and each return is a small victory. 

Sometimes confessions slip through. Things they have been bottling up for a long time, or things they felt were too pathetic to ask for. 

“I wanna date you, again,” Alex announces, her head on Maggie’s thigh as they watch TV.

“Oh yeah?” her wife replies, threading her fingers into Alex’s hair.

“Yeah.” Alex revels in the tingles erupting over her scalp. “Maybe we could have a night every week that’s just for us.”

“I’d like that.” Maggie looks at the TV for a while, eyes glazing over with the flickering colours. “Kara would be happy to keep Jamie, right?”

“Oh god, all that sugar,” Alex groans, “Maybe it’s a terrible idea.”

A laugh rumbles out of Maggie, shaking them both, and Alex finds that after going without it for so long, she’s becoming addicted to the sound.

They acknowledge that sacrifices will have to be made to save their marriage. For two days they tiptoe around the fact, until one day, when they’re walking barefoot on the beach, Maggie makes a declaration.

“When we get back, I’m gonna step down from being the DEO liaison.”

Alex looks at her in surprise, getting caught up in the sunset warming her wife’s eyes to a chocolate brown. “Really?”

“I want to,” Maggie confirms, slipping her hand into Alex’s and swinging her shoes in the other, “We were always good at keeping work out of home and vice versa, but recently…”

“This’ll be better for us,” Alex agrees.  

When they get to the deck, Alex kneels and carefully towels the sand off of Maggie’s feet, and then then Maggie does the same for her. Alex marvels at the span of their past; they have always worked well together, yet perhaps closing the book on their professional partnership would free them both up to look further up the ladder. 

She tells Maggie after dinner that night that she would be honoured to be married to Captain Sawyer. 

They shop for groceries at the local store together, and cook together, the small domestic tasks holding so much meaning. They trade smiles over breakfast, throw each other into the ocean, and show each other the stars through the telescope. Their days are filled with laughter and freedom from the pain and fear of the past few months. 

On the fourth morning, Alex finds Maggie making breakfast, wearing one of her shirts- and nothing else- and later that day she presses her against a tree in the forest and kisses her, victorious that they are getting somewhere.

They’re chopping vegetables together at the island, their silence comfortable, when Alex realises something. 

She clears her throat, focusing on slicing the pepper on her board. “To answer your question, no.”

Maggie glances up. “What question?”

“About walking out on you and Jamie.” Alex’s throat tightens as she sees Maggie falter in her task. “I could never have ended it.”

“You know I…” Maggie sets down her knife, chewing her lower lip. “Jenkins is getting a divorce. His wife served him papers at the office. Like, right there in front of all of us. We all got a look at them each time he left his desk.”

Alex chances a smile. “In a room full of cops…”

“Right?” Maggie chuckles, idly pushing a mushroom with her fingertip, “I knew then, I couldn’t...I couldn’t go through that with you. The separation, talking about custody of the kids, bringing up the ugly ideas about what exactly went wrong…” 

“Some of the things you said,” Alex swallows, losing her nerve and looking away from Maggie’s eye, “I thought it was coming.”

Maggie reaches over, putting her hand over Alex’s. “I talked the talk, Alex, but I never would have served.”

That night, she tries to keep it together, but Alex’s hands tremble on Maggie’s body like they had that very first time. She traces the laughter lines, the signs of the weather they had faced together over the years. Her lips linger at Maggie’s temple, where she whispers her love, and a joke about silver streaks that have them laughing into each other’s skin like they used to.

After, in the quiet, Maggie runs her thumb over the ring she slipped on Alex’s finger nine years before. Following months of roaming alone in the dark, Alex feels like they’ve finally found each other again. 

~

Their ride home is noisy. It’s Maggie drumming on the wheel, Alex putting the windows down until the wind whistles through the car, both of them singing until their throats hurt to the Barenaked Ladies. 

(Their one and only fight on the way back to National City happens because they both insist on paying for lunch.) 

Alex and Maggie both get down to their knees as Jamie squeals happily and launches herself into their arms. She raves about her week spent with her aunt and her grandmother, and Alex sees Kara’s face, full of trepidation. She winks, and Kara melts, pushing off the wall and leaving them. 

Then, Alex looks at her mother. Eliza, pleased, nods before offering to go make tea. 

“Are you happy we’re home, sweetheart?” Maggie asks, smoothing down a few errant strands of Jamie’s hair. 

“Yes, I missed you,” the girl answers, hugging them again, “Are you happy to be back?”

Maggie shares a sly look with Alex, wrapping an arm around her back, pulling the trio closer. Alex closes her eyes, savouring the burst of joy in her chest. 

“Yeah, we’re happy to be home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me, um, know what you think?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little fun re:Does Kara Danvers swear?  
>  Because with their tastes in tv shows, I genuinely can't imagine Kara and Alex not dropping an F-bomb here and there.

_“Oh shit, Maggie, I’m sorry.”_

It was like a note that didn’t quite fit into the rest of the melody, popping out of key. It wheeled in Maggie’s mind all day. Even now watching Alex dancing around her kitchen to a commercial jingle on television, it played again and again like a skipping record.  

She shifted on the couch, resting an elbow against the back. “You know, your sister swore today.”

“Yeah?” Alex responded, rooting in a drawer for the bottle opener. At the click of Maggie’s fingers, she found and retrieved the opener from its place by the sink.

Maggie propped her head on a fist. “Yeah. Accidentally walked into me and spilled some of my coffee.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at the tone, nicking the tops from the bottles and bringing them over. “Everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah I mean.” Maggie gestured, remembering how startled she was. “I was a little surprised at Kara is all.”

“Are you kidding?” Alex held a bottle out, and then dropped to the couch beside her. She fumbled, balancing her beer as she flipped out the footrest and relaxed back. She smirked, tipping the neck of her bottle. “Kara can and _does_ swear like a sailor. In _multiple_ intergalactic languages.”

Maggie stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes. Her socks were striped, swiped from Alex’s drawer. She frowned as she noticed that her left pinky toe was poking out through a worn hole. Out-of-holiday-season jokes aside, her next surprise gift for her girlfriend was going to be new socks. Preferably more than half of which would have a matching pair.

Alex channel surfed for a few minutes, settling on sitcom reruns. On the next commercial break, Maggie sipped at her beer and watched Alex’s thumb tapping against her bottle. She had a faraway look in her eyes, and a small smile twitching at her lips.

“What are you smiling about?” Maggie asked.

“It just reminded me,” Alex said, her smile broadening, “We used to sit on the deck back home and Kara would teach me Kryptonian swears and curses.”

“Woah.” Maggie chuckled, shuffling around in interest, “Can you remember any?”

“Well…” Alex trailed, taking Maggie’s beer and putting them both on coffee table coasters. Then she placed her hands on the couch between them, leaning forward with a flirty smile and suggestion in her voice.

“Depending on how the evening goes, maybe you can bring them out of me.”

They didn’t watch the second half of the episode.

~

Later, Maggie was still amused by it. She said as much when Alex came back from the bathroom, flush still high on her cheeks as she laughed and slipped into the sheets.   

“You know one of her favourite TV shows is Veep, right?”

Maggie rearranged the pillows underneath her head, patting it for good measure before laying down. “Never seen it.”

Alex squinted at the ceiling in thought, tucking the sheets underneath her arms. “I think you’d like it. Lots of shitty people screwing up all the time with great dialogue.”

“Sold,” Maggie drawled.

Still staring up at the ceiling, Alex brought a hand up to brush back the hair at her temples. “Sometimes when Kara and I are having awful days, we text the best kinds of insults to each other.”

This piqued Maggie’s interest. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I screenshot the best.” Alex leaned away, taking her phone from the nightstand and unplugging the charger. She grinned as she searched for a folder, and then handed it over to Maggie. “Here.”

Taking the phone, Maggie inched up on her elbow, beginning to read.

 

**_How’s work?_ **

**_You know what? I think at this point, finding that Supergirl porn is less degrading than working for Snapper right now_ **

 

“Jesus,” Maggie snorted.

“I wasn’t kidding!”

“Bet she was scarred for life.”

“We both were,” Alex grumbled, rubbing the heel of palm against her forehead.

Maggie flicked to the next picture.

 

**_Really did a number on my fingers tonight. I think I’m out of commission for a week at least_ **

**_Oh Alex :(_ **

**_That...was for Maggie_ **

**_Oh, gross!_ **

**_I’m kidding…And it was work related. No guns, no weapons. Not even a water pistol._ **

**_I can never tell with you..._ **

 

Alex had sent through a picture of her right hand. Her index, middle and ring fingers were tied together into a splint. She held it up in the air, pouting beside it.

 

**_Ouch! Have you broken the bad news to Maggie?_ **

**_Yes..._ **

**_Maybe I should buy her an advent calendar. How long does the splint stay on?_ **

 

“I would have taken the advent calender,” Maggie said thoughtfully, thinking about chocolate on her tongue, and then grinned down at Alex, “But then again, your mouth more than made up for-”

“Maggie,” Alex whined, shoving at her hip playfully.

Still chuckling, Maggie gave Alex a slow kiss to placate her, and then continued to read.

 

**_If he is insubordinate on one more mission, I’m breaking his fucking legs_ **

**_Fennerman?_ **

**_Fennerman_ **

**_Fucking Fennerman_ **

**_Agreed_ **

 

“Fennerman?” Maggie asked.

“Tall, lanky, incompetent,” Alex listed, “Looks like what a person would look like if they were steamrolled like a cartoon?”

Maggie scrunched up her nose, thinking about the lumbering agent who didn’t seem to get on with anyone. She had seen the fluster he caused at being given the simplest tasks, and wondered more than once how he was still on the payroll.

“Oh I hate that guy.”

Alex huffed, pushing her head further into the pillow. “Join the club.”

Maggie turned her attention back to the next screenshot.

 

**_Weekly I miss Cat text_ **

**_She treated you so bad_**

**_But here I am like always, ready to stretch myself at her feet like a cowhide rug_ **

**_Oh boy_ **

**_I’d even let her stuff and mount me like a taxidermist_ **

**_Kara that’s...okay_ **

 

Maggie made a noise, unsure of how Kara could come out with a statement like that and still be aware and naive simultaneously. Beside her, Alex’s eyelids were getting heavier.

 

**_Two minutes, Alex. Two. Minutes._ **

**_This is why I’m now sleeping with a woman, Kara._ **

**_I’ve spent longer warming up leftovers_ ** **_  
_ ** **_than he did for me!_ **

 

“Two minutes…” Maggie read aloud, “Is that about…?”

Alex groaned. “Yes.”

“Oh, poor Kara.” Maggie lowered the phone and narrowed her eyes. “You don’t talk about our sex life, do you?”

“I mean, you last a little longer than two minutes.” Alex bit her lower lip as Maggie glared, and she finally broke, “Sometimes.”

A pillow whacked across her face as she erupted into a fit of giggling. Maggie gave her another kiss and she let out a sleepy hum in return. When Maggie pulled back, her eyes remained shut.

 

**_Good morning!_ **

**_It is indeed a good morning_ **

**_Oh, so you two...?_ **

**_Maybe..._ **

 

Maggie read the screenshotted message over a few times, but couldn’t discern anything more than an idea that she and Alex had done something that warranted a conversation between the sisters beforehand. Was there something Alex had been uncomfortable with? Was there something that Maggie had done to upset her?

She swiped across, and got her answer in the other half of the messages:

 

**_How’d it go?_ **

**_Let’s just say, Maggie laid enough pipe to make Keystone blush._ **

 

Maggie gulped, swiping left and then right again on the messages.

“Alex?”

“Mmmhmm?” Alex’s head lolled towards her, eyes cracking back open as Maggie spun the phone screen to face her.

“Is that about what I think that’s about?”

Alex blinked and read the screen. Then she balked and snatched the phone back, holding it tightly to her chest as if it would erase the messages from Maggie’s memory. “Oh my god, Maggie, I’m sorry.”

Maggie’s eyes widened. “It _is_ , isn’t it?”

“I was…” Alex swallowed, putting the phone back on the nightstand, keeping her back to Maggie as she admitted: “I was nervous.”

“So you talked to your sister about it?”

“No I just-” Alex slowly lay back down, staring up at the ceiling, and then over at the nightstand, and then the headboard; anywhere but her girlfriend’s steady gaze. “I-I wasn’t sure about...accessories.”

Maggie didn’t reply, watching the fidgets of Alex’s hands over the top of the covers.

“We- you and me- were talking- starting to talk about... _things_ , and I just-” Alex shrugged, pressing her hands flat over her stomach, “One night we were a little tipsy and we were watching this show and there was a-a _scene_ with two women and a toy and...we got talking.”

Maggie tried to imagine that conversation. She called up a few memorable episodes of shows she had watched in her time, tried to tamper down the hysterics that bubbled in her stomach at the thought of Kara and Alex sitting rigidly on a couch during such scenes.

“Right.”

“Yup, so…” Alex waved over to her phone. “Yup.”

Maggie made a sucking noise with her teeth, staring at her girlfriend’s mortified profile. There were so many ways she wanted to handle it. She wanted to tease Alex mercilessly, but she was concerned about Alex being embarrassed and closed off. She also wanted to soothe her, let her know that it was okay, that it wasn’t weird.

But another question came to mind.

“What about when you returned the favour?”

Alex reached over to click off the lamp, plunging them into the darkness with a splutter.

“Oh believe me, you don’t wanna see _those_.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever wonder what it would have been like if Alex had been posted to the desert base, and Lucy to the city?

**_AU: Set just at the end of 2x15, when Alex goes after Cadmus alone._ **

“We should double date.”

The announcement came out of the blue. Maggie looked up at her companions in surprise. The pair stared back, their faces betraying nothing. She sighed in resignation, counting out the coins from the change of the last round. She circled a quarter, thinking that they’d probably been discussing this for a while. 

“After what my last girlfriend said to me?” she said with a scoff. She wiped some of the condensation off of her bottle. “Maybe not right now.”

Kara glanced at Lucy, and then shrugged. “It could be fun.”

Maggie fixed her with a glare. “I third wheel with you two enough.”

It hadn’t been an easy beginning for the three of them. At first, Lucy and Maggie did nothing but lock horns. She abhorred the kind of treatment that Lucy was prepared to condone against aliens - even if they were innocent. And Lucy was shocked that an NCPD detective would mingle with the same crowd that she perceived as possible threats. With Supergirl thrown into the mix, Maggie was shocked to learn how far a DEO agent was prepared to go just to back up the rough and tumble hero - consequences and all. 

But eventually, through a combination of shared experiences and victories, they called a professional truce, and the three grew together as friends. 

One day, Kara Danvers side-stepped into the picture and she eagerly formed a working relationship with Maggie, trading tips at scenes and over coffee. It was only when she saw Lucy’s longing after both the reporter  _ and _ the hero they ran operations with that Maggie was able to put the two and two together.

Kara was Supergirl.

After quietly cornering Kara in the bar, she got a skittish answer on why the two weren’t dating. Initially, the pair had been awkward following Lucy’s break up with a certain James Olsen, who was now free to date Kara. However, the rambling reporter explained to Maggie that she had rocked the boat and watched Lucy swim to shore, only to realise that she just wanted to dive after her. 

It took a few gentle prods- and finally a rant on a medical bed as Dr Hamilton stitched up her shoulder- but Kara came through, going to Lucy’s apartment that night. 

Kara looked down at her phone as a number of texts buzzed through in rapid succession. 

“Oh no,” she mumbled, unlocking the screen and reading. 

“What?” Maggie asked.

Lucy’s phone began to buzz on the table’s surface. “Me too.”

Kara read as more texts came through, and then stood so abruptly she knocked her chair backwards. “It’s Alex.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “What has evil sister done now?”

But Kara was already at the exit. 

Alex Danvers wasn’t exactly Maggie’s favourite person. True, she hadn’t met her yet, but everything she had heard did not bode well. The hostility began when she hadn’t reacted favourably to Kara’s news that she was dating Lucy. Her reasoning was that she objected to Supergirl dating a senior ranking DEO agent. But as weeks went on it escalated, and Alex’s protests cooled to a personal spitefulness.

More than once, Lucy and Maggie had consoled a disheartened Kara. Her family- her sister- apparently did not accept her, something the three seemed to have in common. The anecdotes mounted, coming to a head on Valentine’s Day. Lucy had planned a romantic evening, but it was sullied by more comments from Alex. Leaving a tearful Kara with Maggie, Lucy charged to Alex’s to read her the riot act.

Maggie was never really sure of what happened that night, or the nights that followed. Lucy and Kara both cancelled plans with her, rainchecking until the next week, after which there was a brand new development that seemed to explain- if not justify- the lashing out. 

Alex had been in the closet the whole time. 

“What’s happening?” Maggie asked. 

Lucy threw her jacket around her shoulders, pocketing her phone. “Alex has done something stupid.”

Yes, Maggie now understood her reasons for acting as she had in those tumultuous weeks, but she was still of the opinion that Alex hadn’t earned forgiveness for her behaviour towards Kara, and she glowered. “No surprise.”

Lucy shot her an apologetic look as she charged off after Kara, leaving Maggie alone. A guy at the bar raised his glass in sympathy, and she dropped back against the booth with a sigh.

“This is why I could never double date with you two.”

~

Maggie got a text forty minutes later reassuring her that everything was under control. She suggested bringing dinner, and it was an offer gratefully received. Still, she only found Lucy at the DEO, and resolved to keep the food in her office until Kara also joined them. 

She reclined against the upper balcony railing, following Lucy’s slow pacing until a figure appeared on the outside landing. Maggie stood upright as Kara hurried towards them.

“Kara.” Lucy enveloped her in a tight hug as soon as she reached them. “What the hell happened? You had to stop a ship from going into space?”

“It’s okay, I’m here,” Kara said, nuzzling Lucy’s hairline.

As they parted, Maggie pointed a finger at her in menace. “Do not scare me, or her, like that again.”

Kara’s eyes twinkled at the scolding. “I won’t.”

Maggie crossed her arms over her chest, feeling ridiculous that she could ever be Supergirl’s keeper. But dammit, if Kara hadn’t become like a surrogate little sister in the past few months. “Dinner’s gone cold in Lucy’s office.” 

Kara wilted and Lucy rubbed her bicep. “Nothing a microwave can’t fix.” 

“Or heat vision,” Maggie chimed.

The three shared a smile, and turned to lean against the railing. Across the way, a red-haired woman was talking with J’onn. Maggie squinted as the pair hugged, wondering if she recognised the agent. “Who’s that?”

Lucy rubbed her palms together. “That would be Agent Danvers.”

Incredulous, Maggie’s attention switched to Kara. “What-  _ that’s _ your sister?”

The superhero nodded. “Yeah.” 

Maggie took in the woman’s features for the first time at a distance, relaying the stories in her mind, Kara’s pained voice in her ear. She thought about an angry scowl twisting into that face, what her voice might sound like raised in fury or spitting fire. The upturn of her nose at Kara’s news. 

And yet, there was something open and sincere as she watched the agent and J’onn part. He clearly cared about her more than another employee. She narrowed her eyes, the dots disconnecting. 

Lucy exhaled slowly as Alex left the conference room and made for the stairs, not noticing her audience on the opposite side. “She’s so impulsive.”

“She saved all of those refugees!” Kara countered.

“It was still reckless. So, so reckless.”

Maggie watched Alex trot down the stairs and into the belly of the DEO. “Heroic types often are.”

“You know, our conversation got interrupted earlier,” Lucy said, pushing off the railing, “And her birthday is coming up...”

Maggie caught the silent side-eye that passed between Lucy and Kara, and their meaning clicked. “No.”

“You and Alex-”

“No way, are you kidding?” Maggie peeked over the railing, making sure the agent was long gone. “I’m not dating someone that said what they said to you.”

Kara shrugged. “She was in the closet, Maggie.”

Lucy licked her lips, humour dancing in her eyes. “Look, we’re not asking you to marry her.”

Kara nodded and waved in agreement. “Maybe you could just have some fun with her.”

“Ew, Kara,” Maggie said, rolling her eyes. 

“Not like- not like  _ that _ !” Kara frantically wrung her hands. “You could be a surprise guest at her birthday.”

Maggie saw a plan forming on Lucy’s face, eyes drifting up and down her body pensively. Kara glanced at her girlfriend, and then smiled brightly. 

She knew they were on two different wavelengths, and yet she was intrigued by both. 

“What kind of surprise guest?”

~

“I feel ridiculous.”

“You look…professional,” Lucy appraised. 

“Ha.”

It was Kara’s idea, really. She claimed that Alex always enjoyed herself the most when she was pushed out of her comfort zone and forced to learn something new. If big sister really was a baby gay, she was going to crawl out of her skin. 

Which was why Maggie was huddled in a dark corridor of the desert base of DEO in her full uniform. Alex’s shift had ended, and there was a gathering planned for one of the conference rooms. Kara’s idea was to have Maggie masquerade as a kissogram, just for a few minutes until the surprise gave way to laughter, and then have Maggie properly introduce herself. 

It was a gag, a prank, nothing more.  

“You look amazing,” Kara said, bouncing on her toes, “Alex is not gonna know what to do.”

“Oh, I think she’ll have a few ideas,” Maggie said smugly, sliding on gold-rimmed sunglasses. 

The desert base was grimier than in the city, with boots tracking sand and dirt everywhere. Yet it was still as spacious, and they were able to stroll three abreast towards the room where the get together was taking place. 

Maggie had gone undercover many times, and knew that a prank on Kara’s sister was going to be a walk in the park. Yet still, there was a flutter of nervous excitement in her stomach. According to Lucy, most of the DEO agents were aware of the prank, which would only exacerbate Alex’s surprise.  

They paused just outside the doorway. Kara vibrated with barely contained energy. 

“Ready?”

Maggie fixed the cap on her head, looking between Kara and Lucy one last time. “As I’ll ever be.”

Lucy took the lead, entering first. She cleared her throat, and conversation fell away. The knowing leer in some of the agents’ eyes forced Maggie’s chin high. She easily identified Alex at the back of the room, who noticed the sudden hush and found everyone’s focus on her. 

“Who’s this?” Alex asked, bewildered at all the attention being on her. 

“She’s a kissogram,” Kara said brightly, patting Maggie’s shoulder. 

“I am,” Maggie agreed, putting her hands on her belt and sauntering forward, “But that’s Officer Sawyer to you.”

Giggles and whispers fluttered through the air, the clued in agents watching like vultures to see how Agent Danvers would react.

Alex blinked. “A kissogram? What’s-”

“I heard it was your birthday.” Maggie flicked her fingers towards an agent and gestured to the chair next to him. At once he complied, placing it a few feet behind a baffled Alex.

Biting the inside of her cheek to stifle any hilarity, she nodded.  

“Sit.”

Again another ripple went through the gathered crowd, this time a touch more boisterous. It only grew as a pair of agents guided a shocked Alex into the chair. She fell dumbly, her eyes darting between her sister, Lucy and the cop creeping closer. 

Maggie planted her boot on the edge of the chair, forcing Alex to quickly split her legs apart. The agent sucked in a breath, looking from the boot up to Maggie’s face in surprise. The crowd’s reaction was spurred on even more, a wolf whistle breaking through. 

Licking her lips, Maggie swayed closer, leaning on her knee. “What’s a girl gotta do to get some music?”

She flirted with the boundaries, wondering when Kara and Lucy would see fit to pull her back. She took off her police cap, and swung it onto Alex’s head. The woman jumped, but steadied the wobbling cap on her own head before it fell. Maggie’s lips curled in amusement-

Then a siren wailed.

Maggie straightened up, dropping her act immediately. “Not exactly what I meant by music.”

Lucy leaned out of the doorway as an agent briefed her, and she nodded, turning to Kara. “Huge explosion underneath an apartment block downtown.”

“Gas pipe?” Kara suggested.

“Maybe.”

“On it.” And with that, Supergirl was gone. 

Agents scuffled and set down paper plates before trooping out the door. Behind Maggie, Alex stood, but Lucy waved at her dismissively. 

“Relax, it’s a building fire, we’ve got this,” she assured.

Alex stepped forward, trying to protest. “But I’m the commanding-”

“Relax. It’s your birthday,” Lucy interrupted, nodding as the last agent left the room to chase up their duties. “This is purely monitoring Supergirl’s search and rescue efforts. Risk assessment stuff.” 

Maggie watched Lucy go, feeling awkward now. In the abrupt absence of the party atmosphere, of the game they had been playing, Maggie felt like wet paint was drying on her skin. Alex stood there clueless. With the NCPD peaked cap on her head, she looked ridiculous. 

This wasn’t the plan. She felt like admitting it then and there, and letting the agent get over the joke in her own time. But attraction licked at Maggie’s decision making centre, and the temptation to prolong the prank overruled her common sense.

So instead of letting the agent know that this had been a big joke, Maggie reached over and laced their hands together, startling Alex. “You got an office around here anywhere?”

“Uh,” Alex said, glancing down at their entwined hands, “Yeah.”

Backing over to the doorway, Maggie pulled Alex along with her, smirking when the agent’s free hand whipped up to steady the police cap on her head. 

~

Agent Danvers’ office was an unused and therefore unloved space. Apart from three slate-grey cabinets and a desk that was mostly empty, the office was just dead air. But there was a chair, and that was good enough for Maggie’s intentions. 

Alex seemed awkward and guarded, eyes flickering from Maggie to the floor. Their hands still locked together, Maggie tugged the agent around her desk, and pushed her down into the chair. Then she alighted on the edge of the desk, pushing the laptop and single neat pile of paperwork out of the way, and clicked on the lamp. 

“Happy birthday, Agent Danvers,” Maggie said, slipping the sunglasses off, glad to adjust to the light. 

“How did they even allow you in here?” Alex asked, absently straightening the NCPD cap on her head, “Do you know the level of clearance you need to be allowed into this place?”

“I’m a friend of Lucy’s and-” She stopped short, knowing that if she said  _ Kara _ , the jig would be up. Something about this wide-eyed agent made her want to play the game just a little longer. “Supergirl’s.”

Alex started. “What do you mean you’re friends with-?”

“Ah ah, no questions.” 

Maggie surveyed the sight for a few seconds longer, calculating the possibilities. Then she moved forward, straddling Alex’s lap. She enjoyed the squeak of surprise from the agent as the chair creaked backwards.  

“Still no music,” Maggie said, lifting her hips and settling down again, “But we’ll handle it fine. Right, Agent Danvers?”

Alex’s breath hitched, eyes blowing at the title, and Maggie’s lips curled into what she knew was a wolfish grin. 

“Should I call you that?” Maggie asked, leaning forward so that the peak of the cap teased her forehead. It would only take a few inches to duck past and press her lips to the other woman’s. “Or should I call you Alex?”

“Call me Alex?” A ragged plea; Maggie saw the lust etching itself over the uncertainty on Alex’s face.

“Okay, Alex,” she purred, rolling her hips forward.

With a deliberate pace, Maggie reached up to the collar of her dress shirt and popped the button. Alex’s tongue dipped out to wet her lips, and Maggie took it as a cue to continue. Eyes trailed down each inch of skin revealed in the meagre glow of the lamp.

Maggie could see the tension vibrating in Alex’s locked arms, the woman’s attention fixed on the rippling muscles of her stomach as she moved her hips in that crawling rhythm.  

“Do you wanna touch me?”

Alex swallowed, looking up at Maggie and blushing like she’d been caught doing something wrong. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to.”

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “I never said that.” 

She lowered herself into a more comfortable position on Alex’s thighs. She took each of Alex’s hands carefully in her own and flattened them against her stomach. The agent’s palms were calloused, and she enjoyed the gentle bite of them as she guided them around her hips, exploring for the other woman. 

She kept her hips steady, letting Alex relax into the touching, before she slid the hands back to her stomach. Tensing a little tighter, she then slipped the flat palms up over her sports bra, and pressed. Alex exhaled sharply, and then squeezed until Maggie gasped in approval.

Alex’s head was tipped back. Even through the shadow that the peak cast over her face, Maggie could see the dark glimmer of her eyes. She slid her hands away from Alex’s, pleased when the woman took initiative and continued her ministrations. She gripped the back of the chair, leaning in until their faces were mere breaths apart.  

“Do you wanna continue?” she uttered. 

Alex’s eyes slipped closed. After a slight nod, Maggie ducked past her cap to press her lips against the agent’s. It was chaste, a give and take. Then, Maggie sucked on Alex’s bottom lip. The woman’s nerves thrummed in the air, but the hesitation melted as the kisses deepened.

And at the first push of Alex’s hips up against her, Maggie realised the game she had intended to play for the party and the one she was playing now were two entirely separate matters. Because now she  _ wanted _ Alex. A niggling at the back of her mind told her that before anything progressed the agent deserved the truth, but there was a problem. Kissing Alex was intoxicating, and she was dragged further and further under the lull of emboldened hands on her breasts and teasing tongue against her lower lip.

Then again, if Alex was willing to experiment with a kissogram, perhaps this wasn’t her taking advantage at all. She would give Alex every out she needed to be sure. 

She moved her lips to Alex’s jaw and neck, feeling the hum of a groan in the woman’s throat. Hands moved down and lingered at the small of her back for a beat, before continuing on and gripping her ass. 

That was the line in the sand for Maggie. She rose, pressing a last kiss on Alex’s lips before lifting off her lap and getting on her knees. She reached for Alex’s belt, getting it open before panic lurched through Alex’s frame as she sat up.

“Wait, are-” It was the first words they had spoken in a while, and Alex cleared the raspiness from her throat. “They hired an  _ escort _ ?”

Maggie snapped back in alarm. “What? No!”

“Oh, this…” Alex gestured to Maggie on her knees. “Is this part of it?”

“No, Danvers.” Maggie raised herself up, bringing them level again. “I want to. Do you not…?”

“I do but-” Alex swallowed, looking down at her open belt and then back up. “I’ve never done anything like this before.” 

Maggie nodded, cradling the side of Alex’s jaw. She could fall into the vulnerability washing over the woman’s face. “I kinda figured,” she replied softly. 

Alex’s mouth twitched. “Does that bother you?”

“No.” Maggie kissed her again, and then pressed Alex back against the chair. “In fact, let me show you how much it doesn’t bother me.”

Maggie folded the hem of her shirt and tank top above the belt, baring a sliver of flesh. She ducked her head, giving one, two kisses to the smooth skin. 

“Oh- like-” Alex’s throat caught as Maggie’s tongue darted underneath her navel. “Oh, okay, uh-”

Maggie’s fingers bunched the hem of Alex’s shirt and tank top, and begin to lift it when hands clamped around her wrists. Immediately, she caught the anxiety in Alex’s face.

“Do you wanna stop?” she asked calmly.

“I have a lot of scars,” Alex blurted. She grew sheepish, her hands relaxing around Maggie’s wrists, “The job I do, y’know.”

Maggie wondered what cruel things men had said or done to make Alex feel this way. “Don’t be shy, Alex. It’s not a bad thing.”

After a moment or two, Alex’s hands uncurled from her wrists. She quirked her head. “Do you wanna stop?”

“No but-” She looked away as Maggie pushed the hem to the bottom of her bra. “They’re kinda- they’re ugly.”

Each wound was different; scars from battles Maggie couldn’t imagine. She had been in enough raids gone south with Lucy and Kara to know the kinds of injuries DEO agents sustained as they carried out their job. Knives and bullets were just as prominent in combat engagements as razorsharp claws and teeth.

“They aren’t,” Maggie insisted, letting go of the shirt to dance her fingertips down over the map of Alex’s stomach. Muscles flinched under her touch, and she looked up again to find Alex with her eyes closed. “Are they sensitive?”

Alex shook her head. Maggie could see her getting lost in the haze of desire, and decided that the poor birthday girl had suffered long enough. She tucked her fingertips underneath Alex’s belt, jilting her hips. 

“Uh…” Alex’s eyes snapped open as Maggie unbuckled her holsters and rested her hands on the fly of her slacks.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Alex breathed, and then Maggie unfastened the button and unzipped the fly. She skimmed her knuckles over Alex’s skin as she moved her grip to her hips and then pulled the slacks cleanly down to her ankles. 

A wound that had healed into a ridged scar wormed over Alex’s thigh. It was only a few inches long, but it struck her as familiar. She had a similar scar that snaked over one shoulder. A suspect jacked on PCP had stabbed her in the back with a switchblade in Gotham. She had still managed the arrest, the shock numbing most of the pain at the time. 

“This one…” Maggie murmured,  “Maybe you can tell me the story of how you got that.”

“Alright,” came the stilted reply.

Maggie looked up at the anticipation locking all of Alex’s focus onto her, and she smirked, hooking her hands under Alex’s knees and tugging her lower body forward. The agent let out a noise of surprise, which lessened to a whimper as Maggie spread her thighs as wide as the slacks around her ankles allowed.

“Later though,” Maggie murmured, leaning in to trace Alex through her underwear. 

She grinned against the dampness, grinned at the sounds Alex produced at the contact, and grinned at the hand that curved around the back of her skull.

And then she set to work. 

~

“I’m back!” Kara announced. She deflated, looking around as she joined Lucy, who was folding paper plates into a trash bag. “Wait, is it over?” 

“Yeah, everyone kinda went back to work, babe.” Lucy tied the bag and then let it crumble in on itself.  

Kara’s shoulders dropped. “I was gonna take so many pictures.”

Lucy suppressed a smirk, coming closer to rub her girlfriend’s bicep. “Well, don’t worry. I got a few for you before the siren went off.”

“Thank you.” Kara’s eye wandered around the empty room, and she frowned at the doorway as agents passed, engrossed in their duties once more. “Wait, where  _ is _ Alex?”

Lucy picked up the bag, winking and beckoning for Kara to come to the doorway after her. “Maggie’s giving her a very special birthday present.”

“What-” Kara’s eyes widened as she tipped her chin back, and then she slapped her palms over her ears. “Oh my  _ god _ , ew!”

~

If the white knuckles clenching around the arms of the chair or the thighs trembling on either side of her head weren’t enough to tell her that Alex was close, the stifled whimpers did the job. Soon though, fingers threaded into her hair, and with one last cry, Alex came. 

Maggie kept her hands firmly on Alex’s hipbones, pinning her to the chair, lest she jackknife straight out of it in the throes of her orgasm. She eased the agent through it, revelling in the gasps until the hand in her hair tugged her away. 

She licked her lips, and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, unable to stop the rush of triumph at reducing Agent Danvers to a quivering mess in her office chair. She leaned back on her knees, smoothing her palms over them and then standing up. 

With messy hair and flushed cheeks, Alex stared up at Maggie in wonder. “That was uh…”

Maggie bit the edge of her tongue. “Yeah,” she said, 

Alex’s forearms folded across her hips and navel as she inhaled deeply. She blinked, more alert all of a sudden. “Wait, um…” She drank in Maggie’s reclining figure. “Do you want t-that too?”

She couldn’t even get the words out, and yet heat raced down Maggie’s body, settling between her thighs as she uncrossed her ankles. 

“Alex, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, really.”

“I-” Alex shot up out of her chair, and with Maggie leaning on the edge of the desk, she towered over her by a few inches. “I do want to.”

Maggie’s eyes trailed to Alex’s lips. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

Alex kissed her, and instantly drew back. Maggie licked her lips, grimacing in realisation. She wondered if it was the first time Alex had tasted herself on someone else’s mouth, and made to explain when Alex leaned in with a firmer, harder kiss. 

_ Guess it isn’t a problem then.  _

Alex’s hands pushed at her hips, encouraging her to shimmy backwards onto the edge of the table. The agent stepped forward, moving her kisses down Maggie’s neck. They were feather-light; kisses from a woman who had spent too much time with men who were overwhelming and sloppy, and in her inexperience, was afraid to be the same.

Maggie slipped underneath Alex’s shirt. The agent leaned back, letting her peel it up and off, leaving her in just the tank top. She curled fists in the white cotton, enjoying the twitch of stomach muscles as she yanked Alex down into a passionate kiss. Her hands skimmed across still-bare hips as fingertips fiddled with her belt, opening her slacks in a haphazard manner. 

Alex looked down, fingertips pressing over the hem of Maggie’s underwear, whispering, “Am I okay to…?”

“Yeah,” Maggie breathed, hips subly curving upwards.

For all of Alex’s hesitancy and inexperience, she wasn’t the worst Maggie had ever had. In fact, nerves gave way to a more practised, confident hand. She could sense that Alex found that while the angle was new, the rhythm was familiar. Soon, she was clutching the tank top at Alex’s lower back faster than she expected. 

Alex mouthed along her jaw, the shell of her ear, then her earlobe, whispering, “Good?”

“Keep going,” she panted, gripping Alex’s wrist and guiding her just an inch higher. 

Even in her dizzying state, she thought Alex might have been grinning against her neck. 

~

Curtains fluttered as Kara set Lucy back on her feet. She turned back to close the window as Lucy tossed their decorative pillows onto the floor. Kara smiled, remembering them as the apology gift that Alex had gotten them when she had finally come out and wanted to get back into Lucy’s good books. 

“Maggie and Alex really hit it off,” Lucy said, patting a purple cushion and then chucking it onto the armchair in the corner. 

“I think they’ll be good together,” Kara said, unbuttoning her shirt, “Or really bad. It’s hard to tell right now.”

“They’re both driven, sarcastic and hotblooded women.” Lucy swung her jacket over a hanger and put it into the wardrobe, and then wandered over to Kara’s side of the bed. “No reason they won’t get on.”

“Hot blooded?” Kara’s fingers stalled on her shirt as she peered at Lucy through her glasses. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“What, about Alex? She wouldn’t be my type on any Earth,” Lucy scoffed, flicking Kara’s hands away and taking over the task of unbuttoning her shirt. She brushed it from Kara’s shoulders, and then gently slid her glasses off her face, folding them and putting them on the nightstand. 

“Brunch is cancelled tomorrow then.” Kara shyly pulled her closer by the waist, playing with the front of her blouse. “That gives us an extra hour or two in bed, right?”

Lucy pressed her hands at the bottom of Kara’s back, encouraging her closer still. “Somehow, I’m not sure you’re talking about sleeping.”

Kara looked up through her eyelashes. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Well, I have learned that you’re a morning person.”

Kara kissed her then, humming as she pressed Lucy backwards until she lay back onto the bed. Lucy traced one hand up Kara’s spine, the other wiggling into her pocket for her phone. She pulled back, holding the phone between them. 

“I thought you wanted to see the pictures of earlier?”

Kara pushed her wrist down to the mattress, mischief in her eyes. 

“They can wait til tomorrow.”

~

Even when everything settled back down around them, they continued to press soft kisses to each other’s mouths. One would lean away slightly, the other would dip their head back in, and then lean away. And so the pattern continued. 

Eventually, Maggie smiled and pulled back a few inches further, enjoying the glazed look and flushed cheeks of the DEO agent between her legs. “How was that?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Well, I thought it was pretty obvious that I enjoyed it.” Maggie grinned, lazily drifting her hands up Alex’s forearms and resting on her elbows. “Just wondered if you did too.” 

“Yeah, it was good.” 

Alex practically floated on her feet, and with a playful push to her shoulders, she dropped back into the chair. Maggie watched in amusement as she reached around her ankles for her pants. There was a languid way in which she shucked them up, tilting her hips and letting her head loll back, a pleased grin on her face. 

Maggie picked up her shirt from the floor, shaking it from inside out to the right way, and then handing it over. They dressed in a quiet and strange kind of domesticity. Maggie began rebuttoning her shirt, and when Alex noticed she had missed a button, she nudged Maggie’s fingers away and did the rest herself.

“There,” Alex mumbled, fidgeting hands falling to restrap her holsters around her thighs. 

“Thanks.”

Alex’s hands hovered, and then shifted through Maggie’s hair. Tentatively, at first, as if Maggie was going to shove her away. 

“Good birthday?” Maggie asked, carefully tightening her belt. 

“Shut up, you know it was,” Alex mumbled. Her gaze skittered down and lingered on Maggie’s badge. She brought a curious fingertip down to tap the material of the badge holder. “You know for a kissogram that badge looks pretty legit.”

And just like that, Maggie crashed back down from the high that they had produced together. She looked down at Alex’s fingertip tracing the skyscraper. “It is.”

The fingertip froze, wild eyes flying to Maggie’s. Before she could open her mouth to ask, Maggie introduced herself. “Detective Maggie Sawyer, NCPD Science Division.”

“You-” Alex’s hands fell to her side and she swayed on her heels, hissing, “ _ You’re Maggie?!”  _

“Pleasure to finally meet you.”

Alex scratched the back of her neck. “Oh, no, the pleasure was all mine, obviously.”

Maggie curled her fingers in the front of Alex’s holsters, reeling her back in with a low murmur, “I don’t know if it was all yours, Alex.”

Alex nibbled on her bottom lip, and then quietly asked, “Can I?” 

“You don’t have to ask.”

Alex’s touch was warm and cautious as hands cradled her face. These kisses were tender enough to be new, but familiar enough to betray what they had done together in this office. 

“Thanks, for, you know.” Alex cleared her throat, waving between them. 

“Anytime,” Maggie drawled. 

Alex seemed tempted to lean in again, but she side-stepped the desk and smoothed down the front of her pants. “Well, I can’t go back now. They’re gonna know...” 

Maggie picked up her patrol hat from the floor, brushing off the flat top. Then she picked up the folded sunglasses from the desk and slid them into her top pocket. 

She glanced at her watch. “You hungry?”

Alex’s eyes flew up from the floor, and her brow furrowed. “Starving, actually. I don’t think I’m ever gonna see a slice of that cake.”

Maggie slipped her free hand into her pocket, wandering over towards her. “Wanna go get something to eat?”

“Sure,” Alex said immediately, cheeks reddening as she coyly pushed the boundaries; “There is an hour and forty minutes left of my birthday, after all...”

Maggie grinned, planting the patrol cap back on Alex’s crown. 

“Okay birthday girl, let’s go.”

~

The next morning, Lucy convinced Kara not to bother Alex about meeting for brunch, and two weeks later, the trio finally had a fourth member for their fantasy double date.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to @ironicpotential for putting up with this wild idea, and my lone Superlane rambles.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, this is dark. It comes from a Bad Place. Don't put yourself through it if you don't fancy it. xx

She had asked for it harder, and rougher. Well, perhaps hadn’t  _ asked _ so much as  _ begged _ . 

Fists threaten to tear the pillowcase under her as she presses her face to it, taking,  _ taking _ it, because she had asked-  _ begged _ \- for it. So what if it skirts on the wrong side of hurting? That’s what she wants, isn’t it?

Teeth scrape her spine, ragged breath puffing out against sensitive skin as a body drapes over her back. Hips pummel against hers, hard and fast, and soon a hand is sliding around the inside of her hipbone, moving with purpose, reaching where they’re joined, circling just as fast- 

And then, oblivion. Short lived, but crashing into her with its intensity. For a few seconds, all she can feel is the thudding rush of blood in her body, lifting her away from here; her bedroom, her life. And then, she drops forward against the mattress, gasps fanning out between her shoulder blades. 

The toy makes a vulgar, slick noise as it is pulled out of her, the harness jangling until it drops to the floor with a wet thud. Her thighs tremble as she lowers herself down to her stomach. She feels empty, now. 

But then again, she is empty all the time, these days. 

In the darkness of the bedroom, eyes closed and cheek still pressed to the pillow, she waits for the dip in the mattress. But when her companion hasn’t gotten back into bed, she opens her eyes. She sees the shadowy figure hovering, hesitating, before turning to sink onto the edge. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” is the announcement.

Alex lies there, feeling sticky and sweaty and wanting nothing more than to sleep off the new aches and bruises that tonight has brought on old ones. Yet the words wrap around her, and she gingerly sits up instead, turning on the light. “What?”

“I can’t keep doing this. I just can’t,” Maggie says, not facing her.

Alex stares at the hunched shoulders, and then lowers her gaze to her hands, rubbing her thumb against her wrist joint. It has been intense, this whirlwind they’ve swept themselves up into. Maybe it is time to reach the eye of the storm, and calm things for a while.  

“Okay, we won’t do…” Alex swallows, struggling. Ironic, that she can say exactly what she wants and how she wants it when urgent hands are gripping her wrists and hips are pinning her to the mattress, yet can’t when she has time and space. “We won’t to  _ this _ anymore.”

“No, I don’t think you get it.” Maggie turns her head, staring at the bedsheets, speaking over her shoulder. “I don’t want to do _any_ of this anymore.”

Not that she has considered it much, but Alex has always known that if their relationship ended, it would be like this; skin still flushed, sheets still rumpled, harsh words before one of them walked out the door. 

Yet, faced with the prospect of losing this woman, she panics. “Maggie-?”

“You think Kara would want this for you?”

Alex jabs her thumb right into her palm. Rage surges in her chest, replacing the anxiety entirely, and she presses herself higher against the headboard, nostrils flaring. “How  _ dare _ you-”

“What?” Maggie twists, finally meeting her eye. “Mention your dead sister?”

“Stop it.”

“Everyone grieves at their own pace.” Her voice shakes from fighting off both tears and her temper. “But it’s been two months, and you can’t even say her name-”

“Stop. It.”

“Fine.” 

Maggie launches herself from the edge of the bed, reaching down and shimmying back into her underwear. She scoops up her shirt and white bra, the colour emphasising red scratches on her back that Alex had left the first go around. 

“You weren’t to blame for what happened,” she says gruffly, hooking her bra and pulling on her wrinkled skirt.

“Maggie-”

“You weren’t,” Maggie cuts her off, turning to face her, fingers working furiously at the pearly buttons. “I know that it’s hard to confront this. But you’re stuck in a cycle of getting me to hurt you because you think it’s less pathetic than hurting yourself, and I don’t wanna be a part of this anymore.” 

“Are you saying you didn’t like it?” Alex throws back, recalling stuttering hips rolling against her thigh, or stunted moans into the back of her neck, even when the jaws of dangerous pleasure held her in its bite. “I remember you coming more than once from what you did to me.”

“See, that right there!” Maggie growls, stabbing an accusing finger right at her. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

Alex pushes the slicked hair from her temples, rising to the bitterness. Standing there in her socks and shirt, Maggie is a vision that Alex used to adore. Now she just looks ridiculous, and Alex snarls in response. “So what if I like it rough from time to time?”

“Rough is all it ever is, anymore. And we both know you aren’t doing this for pleasure. I’ve caught you staring at the bruises in shame and I just-” Maggie grits her teeth and swipes her slacks from the floor, jamming her legs in one at a time. She shakes her head, yanking up the zip. “I won’t be a part of this. I can’t. It’s killing me.” 

“I watched my sister die, Maggie. I’m sorry if I’m not all roses and sunshine.” 

Maggie stiffens; opens and closes her mouth, then bends to lift her boots and belt from the floor. She trots down the steps away from the bed. 

Alex watches with a hawk-like glare, afraid to take her attention off Maggie for a second. The situation is spiralling. They were supposed to lie together, letting the air cool their bodies, falling asleep and ignoring the gaping hole in their lives for another few hours.  

Maggie maneuvers one of her boots on, stomping her heel in and reaching for the other.

“I loved you, Alex. And now, I think...” Maggie straightens, boot hanging from her hand. She takes a shuddering breath, quieting her tone. “Now, I think I hate you.” She leans down and kicks her other foot into her shoe. “And I think, deep down, you hate me too, for agreeing so easily to this.”

The word  _ hate _ grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her. She watches Maggie loop her belt back through her slacks, the whiplash overwhelming.  _ What have I done to us? _

Horror follows, encapsulating her entire being. “I could have saved her.”

_ If I had been smarter, faster- _

“No, you couldn’t have.” Maggie tightens her belt, clasping it shut, and then sliding her badge onto it. She dances her fingertips along the leather, checking her phone, her gun. Alex watches those nimble fingers, remembering just a few minutes ago, when they had gripped her body hard enough to leave the red marks around her pale hips. “The only way you’re getting out of this hole is to realise that.”

Alex tugs the blankets up around her bare waist, covering her breasts, feeling exposed and unstable. “I can’t do this alone.”

“Reach out to Eliza,” Maggie says, grabbing her jacket from the back of the couch. “She calls every single day and you refuse to talk to her. Or J’onn, or hell, Winn.” 

“I love you.” The desperate selfish urge to  _ cling _ rises up in her throat. “Please, it has to be you.”

“Maybe you did love me once, before all this.” Maggie waves her hand around, tiring of the fight, shrugging on her jacket with a sigh. “But I can’t help you anymore. Not unless you want to get better.”  

“No, please-” Alex chokes, her fists knuckle white on the sheets. “Please, don’t go.”

One hand on the door, Maggie stops, and turns, stunned. Clearly, she did not expect Alex to beg, not like  _ this _ , not  _ for _ this. 

“Please, don’t leave me.”

Alex quivers, remembering a scream of terror; her own. Because her baby sister was gone in a flash of green-

“Alex?”

It had been instant, she had seen the light leaving Kara’s eyes before-

“Alex, hey, can you hear me?” Maggie is beside her, hands on her shoulders, eyes wide in distress.

Suppressed grief claws up her throat, expelling in a single sob. “I miss her so much-”

“I know you do, I know,” Maggie soothes, pulling her into a tight embrace. Alex’s hands fist in her shirt, clutching her as close as she can. 

“Kara-”

“She’s not in any pain now. She’s in-” Maggie stumbles over unfamiliar sentiments. “-Rao’s light, basking in the- his- warmth.”

Great heaving rolls of anguish rush through her, and Alex isn’t sure if she’s really crying because she can barely breathe as she gasps, “Stay,  _ please _ ?”

Maggie kisses her crown, and nods. “Okay.”

She leans back to kick off her boots, getting properly onto the bed and wrapping herself up in Alex.

“I’m so-” Alex hiccups, burying her face in Maggie’s neck. “I’m so sorry.”

Maggie doesn’t reply, just drifts her hands up and down Alex’s back, calming her until thoughts of that day leave her and finally, she drifts off to sleep. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to chapter 5. Set two years later.

A warm, wet tongue against her jawline.

Alex could feel the weight on top of her, the sensation seeping into each limb as she woke up. It wasn’t unusual to wake up this way, but that didn’t reduce the experience each time.

"Morning, you," she murmured.

A raspy laugh broadened Alex's smile, but she didn't get a chance to speak again before a huff of breath blew the hair from her face. Instantly awake, the deep brown eyes she found herself staring into we're not those of her girlfriend, but their seventy pound German Shepard.

Propped up on one elbow and tickling behind one of Jinksy's ears, Maggie grinned down at them.

Alex scowled as the dog lowered her chin to rest on her chest.

"Morning," she grumbled.

"Morning," Maggie returned.

"Do you wanna get off me?" Alex asked the dog, causing her ears to perk straight up.

“Come on, Alex. She's just excited about the trip.” Maggie leaned closer, doubling down her scratches on Jinksy's head. "You're excited for the road trip, aren't you?"

A tail began to thump down around Alex's shin. She couldn't help but be endeared, and brought her fingers up to ruffle the fur around Jinksy's collar. The force of the tail wagging shook both of them as the speed rocketed.

"You love Midvale, don't you?"

The thumping sped up even further. Alex chuckled and leaned up, smacking a kiss on Jinksy's nose before she could wiggle away. The dog leaned up, snuffling indignantly, and then bounded off the bed. Her paws clacked all the way across the open plan apartment.

Free of the weight, Alex sat up and rubbed her eyes. She reached for her phone and saw a message from Kara. As much as she loved her sister, her stomach filled with dread. Anything other than a simple good luck text threatened to derail her weekend, and that was simply not an option.

Maggie kissed her cheek and got out of bed. She shuffled around, picking up sweatpants and a hoodie from the armchair. "Guess I should take this one out."

Alex checked her phone as Maggie dressed. Her worst fears were confirmed at the urgent tone of Kara’s message.

"Hey, can we make a stop at Kara's before we go?" Alex asked, pressing her palm to her forehead. "She says there's some crisis."

"Sure." Maggie leaned down to deposit another kiss. "You deal with breakfast, I'll deal with walkies."

At the W-word, Jinksy stamped her paws, twirling at the door. She let out an excited whine, making both of them laugh. Maggie reached for the leash and waved it in Alex’s direction.

“Be back in a few,” she said, clipping the leash to Jinksy’s collar.

Alex watched them go, listening to her girlfriend chattering to her dog as they receded down the corridor. Then she lay back, contemplating all the pieces that had slotted into place for this weekend to work.

Their relationship had started from a chance meeting. She had planned this weekend for a few weeks, but now she wondered if part of her had planned this from the moment she met the detective and her gunshy pup.

This weekend they were going back to Midvale.

This weekend, she planned to propose.

She pressed her palms into her eyes, letting out a whistling exhale.

“This better be good, Kara.”

~

As soon as she came through the door and saw the leash in Kara's hand, she knew.

Still, before she could accuse her sister of usurping her weekend, a giant ball of golden fluff launched itself at her. Almost bowled over by the weight of the golden retriever, Alex huffed and leaned back against the door.

“Hey! Hey, yes, it’s me, yes-” she said, laughing as Gerty threw herself onto her back. Alex grinned and scratched the tufty, white fur on her stomach.

She looked up, seeing Kara’s mournful expression. “What's wrong?"

Kara twisted the leash this way and that. "I need to go to Metropolis. Can you look after gerty?"

Alex straightened right away, and Gerty jumped up too. She wiggled through Alex’s legs, weaving in and around her in excitement. “Kara-”

“Please Alex. It’s urgent," she pleaded, whipping the leash.

"No, I-"  She pushed Gerty away with her knee, striding over. "You know that this is a really important weekend, Kara."

"I know, I’m sorry," Kara said.

Uninterested in the brewing argument, Gerty trotted between them to lap at her water bowl. Kara swung the leash in her direction.

“You're taking Jinksy! They'll love it!"

Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. It wasn’t a huge deal, taking a second dog. Although her romantic weekend would now include a significant increase in picking up blonde tufts of hair everywhere.

They had done it before, vacationing with both dogs, but that had been birthdays, family dinners with Kara and Eliza. A proposal wasn’t something that could be rearranged around the mischief and misadventures of Kara’s dog.

“But-”

“Please, Alex.”

She knew she wasn’t winning this battle. She sighed, crouching down and flattening her hands. Perking up, Gerty hopped back over and laid her chin, still damp with her water, into Alex’s outstretched palms.

“Fine,” she relented, using her thumbs to gently comb the fine hairs on Gerty’s snout. “Like I could say no to that face.”

Gerty’s tail whipped back and forth, and Alex sighed again. She partly owed her relationship with Maggie to the pup in the first place.

"You wanna come on a roadtrip, buddy?" she asked.

The frantic tapping of paws was her answer.

~

The trip down to Midvale was spent with two dogs lolling their tongues out of the window as they caught the breeze, and Maggie grinning at them from the passenger seat. Every so often, Maggie would reach over and take her hand from the wheel, give her knuckles as squeeze, and it sweetened the anxiety in Alex’s stomach.

As they reached the house and settled in, Alex noted that her mother had left everything that she requested; the stack of tea lights in the cupboard by the sink, the freshly made tiramisu from the bakery in town that Maggie loved to go into every time she came down, and a few bars of the tissue-wrapped, locally produced soaps that she and Maggie hoarded after a visit.

Most importantly, she had hidden the ring box. It was tucked away in her own bedroom, where Maggie wouldn't go searching.

To Alex’s chagrin, her mother has also included a few things that she didn't request. The guest bed was donned in fresh silk sheets, a sinful red colour that didn’t at all match the earthy decor. There was new lingerie placed on Alex’s childhood bed with a note about making it the most romantic weekend she could. There was expensive wine stocked in the rack.

Alex scowled, but left the wine to breathe on the counter anyway.

While they had eaten on the way down from the city, Alex prepared the dessert here. Maggie dished out the dogs’ dinners, and she took the opportunity to plate out the tiramisu, light a trail of candles into the living room, and even change into the lingerie. She considered a dress from her closet before reverting back to what she was wearing.

Besides, the goal was for Maggie to end up stripping her, and the lingerie might be a nice surprise under her T-shirt and jeans.

Standing on the decking of her childhood home, wrapped in her oversized windbreaker, Maggie was a vision. The sun had long ago plunged the sky into a watercolour painting of reds and purples, marking Maggie and the two dogs as silhouetted outlines against the dying evening.

She returned to the trail of candles. The tiny flames flickered and danced in anticipation of the event they were to prelude -

She was so swept up in her vision that she heard the skitter of paws too late-

Gertrude charged in from the decking, skidding straight into the line of tealights. They were snuffed immediately, shooting wax out over the floor.

“No!” Alex shouted, but it was too late.

Maggie came in the patio door, Jinksy cautiously following at her heels. The pair surveyed the damage; wax marked the floor in white spots, and the trail was now incomplete. Gertrude was sitting in the middle of the living room, no inclination that she knew what she had done.

Alex linked her hands behind her head. “Dammit.”

Maggie slowly removed her windbreaker, looking at the two plates of tiramisu on the kitchen island. “Did you plan…?”

“I wanted to be romantic, I guess,” Alex said, dropping her hands. She shrugged.

“Babe.”

“I know. It's stupid.”

Maggie scratched Jinksy’s ear. “No it wasn't. It was sweet.”

Alex checked Gertrude’s paws for wax, and then scraped the spillages up off the floor. She blew out the surviving candles, knowing it was pointless to try and continue on with her plans.

They ended up eating the tiramisu anyway, kitchen lights on, the dogs begging for some at their knee. Alex kept giving Gertrude stern looks, but the dog just inched closer and sniffed at the edge of the table.

“What was the occasion?" Maggie finally asked.

Alex ignored the fantasies swimming up in her mind; of Maggie’s surprise at her down on one knee. Of abandoning the dessert and going straight to bed, or the couch seeing as it was closer.

She suppressed it all, digging her fork into the creamy dessert. “I wanted to do something nice for you. I know you love coming down and, you know, we have time and the house to ourselves."

“Oh I see.” Maggie finished a few mouthfuls of her dessert, and they offered a coy expression. “Trying to seduce me in your family home?”

“Wouldn't be the first time.”

Maggie playfully tapped at Alex's knee with her socked feet. Jinksy butted at her with her snout, while Gertrude continued to practically bounce on her front paws, and Alex thought that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

~

It was always the subtle things with them. Feeding each other, the touches to an elbow, brushing some soapy bubbles from the dishes away from her chin. She had sat in her lab office spaced out more than once contemplating a single look Maggie had given her.

"How did that get there?" Maggie had mumbled, staring at Alex's lips, and she could have sworn her blood ran hotter than the water the dishes soaked in.

The lingerie might still be a nice surprise, she decided, as they watched some TV. This notion was galvanised as Maggie caught on to Alex’s mood, and soon they were kissing on the couch.

"Come on,” she said, before turning off the TV and leading Alex through her own house.

She guided her through corridors she has known all her life, and yet the passage ways were strange, the rooms unfamiliar. Her free hand traced the wallpaper up the hall as if she was seeing the pattern for the first time.

When Maggie turned to her in the doorway of the bedroom, the last bluey twilight painted her profile. Alex felt the proposal there on the tip of her tongue.

Maggie didn’t speak, just drifted her fingertips up Alex's arm, and for a second she thought Maggie was really waiting for it. But she kissed her instead.

They managed to get to the edge of the bed, barely breaking to sit themselves on the edge before they're kissing again. It was passion without rush. Alex remembered kissing boys on the edge of her bed; fumbling teenagers, sideways on, and nothing like this.

They lay back, slipping their hands in familiar routines but all with that same spark of excitement like it’s new, that want inside them.

She faintly heard two sets of paws heading up the stairs and broke away. The dogs appeared at the door, and suddenly she was struggling to push away two excited shadows. Maggie reached over to click on the bedside lamp.

Those first few times they slept together, Jinksy would hop up onto the bed in the morning and lie between them. Alex would trade sleepy miles with Maggie, caressing the sleek fur of the snoozing pup. When they were at Alex’s, occasionally she would be dog-sitting Gerty, and there would be two pups between them.

But now the dogs were fully grown. It was just Jinksy who unfortunately didn’t understand the fact that she was too big to snuggle.

Jinksy took up residence in the corner, her usual place when she came down to Midvale. Gertrude sniffed around for a while before plopping down at the edge of the bed.

Unheeded by the dogs, Alex tried to go back to nibbling on Maggie’s jaw when she received a hand on her chest.

"Babe," Maggie said.

"Yeah?"

“We have an audience.”

Alex bit the inside of her cheek, and then rose to her feet, clapping her hands. “Guys, you can't stay for this.”

When Jinksy and Gerty both ignored her, she clapped her hands and smacked her legs again. “Out."

She gestured at the door. Both dogs lowered their heads and flattened their ears.

“Go on,” Alex said, aware that her voice was bordering on a whine, now.

“Let them stay,” Maggie sighed.

“So we can’t…”

“No, we can't...while they're here.” Maggie patted down her hair where it had been mussed from the kissing. She wrinkled her nose. “It's too weird.”

“Great,” Alex grumbled, “Thanks guys.”

Jinksy gave a wide yawn. Gerty was already asleep.

~

While Maggie slept and the sunrise filtered in through the curtains, Alex devised a plan. Her romantic evening had been interrupted, but every new day was a new opportunity, and she would have to settle for proposing over breakfast.

Gingerly, she slipped out of the sheets and padded to the door, taking care not to wake Maggie or the dogs in the process. As it happened, Jinksy was already awake, and she popped her head up as Alex slinked out.

“Yeah girl, come with me,” she whispered.

Down in the kitchen, Alex ruffled Jinksy’s collar between tasks. “I wanna marry your mom, buddy. You’ve gotta behave so I can ask, okay?”

Jinksy sat at her feet, quirking her head in question. Alex scratched under her chin. “That’s right.”

As she prepared the pancake batter, she fed the dog a stray blueberry or two. "I shouldn't be giving these to you,” she mused, as Jinksy chowed the tiny fruit.

She left the patio door open, airing out the kitchen. It was a beautiful morning outside. The ocean breeze lifted her into her ideal scenario for how the next few hours. The dogs would want to go out into the garden and play. She could shut the patio door and propose at the breakfast table. They would share coffee-tasting kisses, spend a lazy morning in bed. She could call her mom and sister in the afternoon...

Suddenly, she heard the battering of paws across the corridor above her and clumping down the stairs. A blonde blur burst into the kitchen, lunging for Jinksy. The two of them skittered around, playing fighting and before Alex could stop them, they had knocked over their newly topped up water bowls.

The tiles were flooded in seconds, reaching all the way to seep into Alex’s socks before she could jump away.

“Dammit, Gerty!” she yelled, hopping around with the batter-covered whisk high above her head. She threw it into the mixing bowl with a splat and slapped around with her wet feet in the water. She grabbed a towel and tried to mop up the spill, ignored by the play-fighting dogs.

Maggie shuffled into the room, stifling a yawn. “Everything okay? I heard some commotion.”

Alex scowled as she soaked up the water with her towel. “What gave it away? The barking or the shouting?”

Inching up on her tiptoes, Maggie peered over at the stove. The unmade mix still sat stagnant in the bowl. “Pancakes, my favourite,” she said.

She stole a handful of blueberries, planted a kiss on Alex’s head, and then went to the patio doors. She clicked her teeth, beckoning the dogs away from their tossling, and they darted out into the garden.

“Yeah,” Alex mumbled, standing slowly, “Your favourite.”

She threw the soggy tea towel back onto the floor with a pathetic plop.

~

Leaving her sulking behind, Alex suggested a walk in the early afternoon. The day was breezy but bright, and she knew Maggie loved wandering across the beach.

She watched Gertrude chasing Jinksy up the damp sand near the ocean surf, reflecting on Kincaid’s puppy classes. They had worn little graduation hats when they finished. Jinksy’s was adjusted so that ears – by that stage both standing up – could poke through. Gerty had hers pulled off half a dozen times before the actual informal ceremony.

Alex’s certificate said Kara Danvers, because that hadn’t been cleared up and the receptionist was still in a state of confusion about who came to the classes. She almost coaxed Maggie into enrolling in the Intermediate classes, simply for the sentimentality of it.

A squeak dragged her from her memories. Maggie produced the grey duck toy, and at the sound, Jinksy skidded in the sand and swung around in their direction. It wasn't the original toy, which had long ago been chewed through. Jinksy had been so distraught by its absence that Maggie replaced it with a replica. This was now the fourth generation.

Maggie used one hand to throw the toy, and the other to lock their fingers together. Each time they came to Midvale, Alex would tell her stories of when she grew up here, surfing with her father, looking back on things that she had never told anyone. Like grains of sand on the beach, the stories sifted through her fingers without her needed to clutch at them, or Maggie trying to draw them from her.

“My dad once convinced me that if I stared hard enough into the sky, I could see all the TV satellites,” she announced.

“Oh yeah?”

Alex nodded. She looked out onto the hazy line of the horizon, wondering how something could be so defined and hazy at once. Her perfect fantasies of proposing was much the same. One speech, one act, one answer; that was all it would take. And yet still it hadn’t been brought into reality yet.

The ringbox weighed her coat pocket down, and she squeezed her free hand around it.

“My grandpa died,” she finally said, “I found out that he did this to take me out of the house while my mom and uncles discussed the funeral."

Maggie didn’t say anything, simply rubbing her thumb along Alex’s. Jinksy grabbed the duck, trotted back to them, and snuffled it against their joined hands. Maggie laughed, taking the toy and chucking it up the beach once again. They fell into a peaceful rhythm of this, the thundering of the paws on wet sand and soft crash of the shore filling in their conversation.

Seemingly fed up with nosing around in mounds of sand and pebbles, Gerty headed for the water. Jinksy moved to follow, but her pace stuttered as she watched Gerty swimming in the low tide. She glanced back at Alex and Maggie, unsure of the gentle waves, her ears flattening as she dropped the squeaky duck toy onto the beach.

“You and me both, buddy,” Maggie said.

Overwhelmed by the box, by the memories of the beach, by the surrealist idea that one day this woman beside her could be her wife, Alex pressed her lips against Maggie’s temple and murmured, “I love you.”

“Yeah?” Maggie said, a smile in her voice, “How much?”

"I never imagined…"

Alex saw the tree line at the edge of the forest. She knew the peace it held, and decided that there would be the perfect spot. Only the sounds of the birds and the insects in bushes would stand in the way of proposing. It was away from the city, from the chaos that life brought. It was the forest where she had gone away to seek peace after her father died and the turmoil that it brought on her shoulders. It was perfect.

They put the dogs back on their leashes, Jinksy proudly hanging on to the squeaky grey duck and carrying it with her as they headed towards the forest. The wet fur of Gerty’s flank brushed against Alex’s knee, but with her heart pounding in her chest, she didn’t mind so much.

Nervous, she rambled out a well-loved anecdote about the first time that they brought Jinksy to the forest. She had sniffed along the river and been startled by a family of otters. Despite being three times the size and fully capable of ripping even the most vicious of otters to bits, Jinksy reared back, whimpering and scampering back to Maggie’s side.

As they reached a clearing, Alex spied her opening. The birds were indeed singing, the river trickled along to the right, and the sunlight blanketed the space. They let the dogs off their leashes, and then Alex stopped Maggie’s pace with a gentle touch to her elbow.

Maggie turned with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I-uh,” Alex said, her throat constricting. She clenched her hand around the leash, twisting it this way and that. “Listen, the thing is-”

“Gertrude,” Maggie said suddenly, interrupting her.

Alex blinked. “What?”

Maggie turned in a slow circle. Jinksy was rolling around in a patch of bright green grass, but Gertrude was nowhere to be found.

“Gertrude!” she called again. “Gerty!”

Once again, the dog had disrupted her plans and scarpered her courage. They searched the paths off of the clearing, listened out for any rustling or paws tramping through the undergrown, but there was nothing. After a few minutes, Alex’s frustration subsided into real worry.

“We’ve lost Kara’s dog,” she said, bracing a hand on her hip and turning this way and that, "Shit."

As she tried to peer through the thicket of trees and bushes, Maggie whistled for Jinksy. The dog padded over, and she clipped on her leash.

“Go find Gerty,” she instructed, and as if she knew what her owner had said, Jinksy began to sniff at the air.

It was a mere thirty seconds later that Alex heard Maggie’s soft call behind her.

"Hey Alex? I found Gertrude."

Alex turned to where Maggie was facing, and instantly found her. Standing proudly on a mucky ridge was Gerty. Her golden fur was so thick with mud that she resembled a chocolate Labrador.

“Gerty, no,” Alex scolds, “Look at you!”

At the address, Gerty’s tail batted back and forth, flicking muddy water this way and that. Suddenly, she lunged down off the ridge and charged towards them.

"Gerty, NO-!"

~

Inside, pans sizzled with Maggie’s cooking. Outside, the splashes of the restless golden retriever in the tub of mucky water filled the air.

Alex scowled as Gertrude tried to get out.

“You’re lucky I love you,” she said.

Gerty perked up as Alex scrubbed around her collar area, still not settled against the assault of the soapy water.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you.”

Growing more agitated, Gerty tried to shift-

"Stop-"

-and ended up sloshing Alex’s whole lap in lukewarm, brown water. She gritted her teeth, staring the retriever straight in the eye until the dog shyly turned away.

“Bad girl,” Alex growled.

She continued to wash the tangles and matts out of Gerty’s fur, and glanced at the marches of a black and tan blur to her right. Inside, Jinksy patrolled the island, vigilant at every movement both in the kitchen and out on the decking.

“Look how good Jinksy is being.”

Finally, the German Shephard sat, watching them with her head tilted. Even with her being over two years old now, it took Alex back to that second lesson, when Gerty refused to sit and Jinksy did straight away. She had been frustrated, even embarrassed that her tiny retriever wouldn’t cooperate, and yet Maggie’s laughter had caused those early flutterings in her stomach, taking the sting out of the humiliation.

Alex made sure the dogs were both shut outside before she entered the kitchen. Maggie wore Eliza’s apron, her hair thrown up in a messy ponytail and her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She hummed as she cooked, and with the exhaustion and frustration stripping her raw Alex just wanted to produce the ring now and hope for the best.

But getting soaked, covered in clumps of blonde hair and sweating from exertion is not how she had pictured doing this, so she quietly moved to the stairs to head for the shower, defeat heavy on her shoulders.

~

Despite sitting for almost fifteen minutes, the red brick wall was still frigid under Alex’s thighs. She stared into the dancing flames in the firepit, her tartan blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Both Gerty and Jinksy were curled asleep by her feet.

She glanced back at the single light on in the house, where Maggie was getting showered and dressed, and then turned back to the firepit. With a heavy sigh, she tossed the ringbox back and forth in her hands.

They went home tomorrow, and somehow she still hadn’t gotten a chance to actually do what she’d brought Maggie down here for. Every opportunity had been thwarted, every moment missed.

She gently nudged Gerty’s paw with her toe. “What is wrong with you, huh?”

Gerty blinked up at her, and then huffed, nuzzling back to sleep. Alex rolled her eyes.

“Oh, now you’re calm and not bothering, huh? Where was this attitude today?”

The back door opened, and Alex twisted to see Maggie coming down the patio with two steaming mugs. As discreetly as she could, Alex tucked the ringbox back into pocket and shrugged the blanket back around her shoulders.  

When she was close enough, Alex could smell the cocoa in the mugs Maggie brought. They were set to the side, and then Maggie sat down on the brick wall. She nudged her elbow to Alex’s, raising an eyebrow.

“Room under there for one more?" she asked.

With a burgeoning grin, Alex lifted one arm so that Maggie could shuffle up against her, and then enclosed her in the blanket. For a while, she gazed up into the night’s sky, seeing the twist of sparks and smoke chasing up towards the stars. She faintly traced patterns on Maggie’s shoulder, enjoying the peace.

“Found any satellites yet?” Maggie asked.

“Not quite,” Alex replied, “Still trying.”

“Maybe you should try using that telescope.”

At the mention, Alex remembered a dozen times she had wrapped Maggie up in her arms, felt her noises of wonder and awe as she stared up through the telescope and saw the stars. She was about to suggest doing that very thing when Maggie spoke again.

“I know you’ve been trying to ask me something.”

For a second, Alex wondered if she had been caught by a spit of the fire, because her chest burned. Jinksy raised her head, interested in her humans.

“Yeah?” she rasped, throat tight at Maggie’s knowing gaze.

“Yeah,” Maggie gently confirmed. She swayed against Alex, nodding. “So, ask me."

Alex hesitated, remembering all those perfect moments over the weekend that she had missed, before shuffling out of the tangled blanket. She knelt, heart thumping as she fumbled the ringbox from her pocket.

“Maggie Sawyer,” she said, voice wavering. She pried open the box, trying to recall the speeches she had rambled to herself in the car, in the shower, in the lab when she was alone. But as she saw the firelight in the tears filling Maggie’s eyes, she lost every word, focusing only on the single question. “Will you marry me?”

Maggie bit her bottom lip, nodding rapidly. “Yeah,” she managed.

Incredulity surged in Alex’s chest. She had asked, and Maggie had answered.

“Yeah?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Alex let out a sob of relief, trembling hands fidgeting the ring out of box and onto Maggie’s finger. And then Maggie swept her into a kiss. Her neck was stretched up and the ground was jarring against her knees, but she kissed back with all the relief and passion that she could.

A weight pushed against her side, and she pulled back, resting on her heels. Jinksy whined, glancing between them. Overjoyed, Alex buried her face into Jinksy’s neck and ruffled the fur on her back. She kissed the dog’s cheek, causing her to shake about.  

Her voice thick with tears, Maggie reached over to scratch at her neck and said, “You’re getting a stepmom, Jinksy.”

Her eyes lit up as if she knew what Maggie had told her, and she ducked in under Alex's chin for more affection.

And Gerty, for all of her hyper antics over the weekend, let them be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> My twitter and tumblr are open for prompts, if you have any: santonaranja


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